Behind Closed Doors
by rahleeyah
Summary: Inspired by Noël Coward's "Private Lives". On a quiet getaway with their respective lovers in Paris, Ruth and Harry unexpectedly cross paths with one another for the first time in years. One conversation may hold the key to changing both their lives forever. Chapter 18 is up.
1. Chapter 1

Paris at sunset was a beautiful thing to behold. The lights sparkling along the river, the Eiffel Tower just visible in the distance, the sounds of cars and the laughter of people passing by on the street below floating up to where Harry stood, alone and somewhat forlorn, on the balcony of his posh hotel suite.

It was supposed to be a bit of fun, this trip to Paris. Just Harry and a rather agreeable woman he'd met at an embassy gala a few months before. _Fun_ was a more or less foreign concept to Harry, but having worked two straight years without taking a single day of holiday time or sick leave he had been strong-armed into this little break by the Home Secretary, and - not wanting to spend a full fourteen days holed up alone in his too-quiet house - he had elected to make the most of the gift he'd been given. Paris at sunset was a beautiful thing, and there was a beautiful woman in the en suite, and they would soon go down to enjoy a beautiful dinner, and if his heart wasn't really in it, he supposed that didn't matter all that much. He would enjoy Rebecca's company, would wander through the streets of this city he loved nearly - but not quite - as much as London, would venture through museums and _pâtisseries_ and gaze in wonder at all the beautiful things around him, recall the misspent days of his youth and try his very best not to think of _her_ , the one woman he wished to see more than any other, the one he had promised to bring with him to this city one day.

 _Another promise broken,_ he thought grimly. It had been two years since he'd last seen her, since he'd looked in her eyes and murmured _it's my turn,_ gone off to face the consequences of his actions, to bear silent witness as John Bateman ended his pitiful life. That day, that horrible day, the day it all came crashing down, the day Ruth had watched him with vengeance in her eyes and told him _it was unfair of you to love me,_ that day had nearly been the end of him. After dealing with the plods and sorting through the mess Bateman had made Harry had returned to the Grid to discover that a provisional leadership had taken over in his place, that Ruth had been sent home, that he was to _prepare for life after MI-5._ In that moment he had only wanted _her_ , wanted to see her, to hold her, to grasp her hand in his own, to tell her the truth, tell her how Albany did not really work, that he had not traded his humanity for her, only his career. But that very day he'd been placed under surveillance, shuffled off the Grid by a security detail, and when he finally stepped foot within the halls of Thames House once more it was to discover that Ruth had vanished, without a trace. Even Malcolm did not know where she had gone; _she learned a few tricks out there, I suppose,_ Malcolm had told him sadly.

And that had been that. There were no second chances for he and Ruth, no saving grace, no absolution, no resolution, no healing for the festering wound she'd ripped in his chest. She was gone, long gone now, settled in some corner of the world too far for him to reach, and he would have to do his best to soldier on without her. It was hardly the first time, but somehow it hurt all the more now, now that they had come so damnably close to seizing something more for themselves. He knew the taste of her kiss, now, the warmth of her skin beneath his fingertips, the way she sighed his name and cradled him between her thighs, had learned a million secrets about her during the few short months between her return and his disastrous proposal, and those secrets sat heavy as lead in his chest. He had cocked it all up, and she was gone, and there would be no putting things to rights between them. Not now, not after everything.

 _Stop this,_ he told himself reflexively, the way he did whenever his thoughts drifted to her. Which, to be fair, was not so very often any more. It was just Paris, the lights and the sounds and the smells, and the memory of a quiet conversation, a hope so long nurtured, so cruelly dashed. He never should have brought Rebecca here, he knew, should have insisted on Venice or Rome or even Madrid, but Paris was closer to home, and Rebecca had suggested it herself, and he was tired of fighting.

To his right he heard the sound of a door opening and closing; whoever was staying in the suite next door to his was stepping out onto their own balcony now. There were a few strategically placed potted plants on the right side of the balcony, shielding him from his neighbor's view, for which he was very grateful. Harry had been too long a spy, and he did not enjoy the sensation of being observed, even by a stranger, even when he was doing something as inconsequential as staring out at the vision of Paris at sunset.

"It's beautiful, Rachel," he heard a man say in a vaguely Northern sort of accent; he sounded like a Yorkshireman, but one who had spent most of his life trying very hard _not_ to sound like one. "I'm glad we're here."

If this Rachel answered him it was in a voice too soft for Harry to hear, and based on the man's next words Harry was fairly certain that the woman had said nothing at all. It wasn't that he was intentionally eavesdropping, it was just that the closeness of the two balconies and the crisp evening air allowed the stranger's voice to carry, and Harry had been too long a spy to ignore any conversation taking place within his hearing, regardless of whether or not it was intended for his ears.

"What's gotten into you?" the man asked, his tone rather haggard. "You've been in a mood since we got here."

"I'm not in a _mood,"_ the mysterious Rachel fired back, and Harry felt his whole body tense, his heart start to race, his stomach swooping uncomfortably as the sound of that voice washed over him and alarm bells began to ring in his mind. "I just don't see why we had to come here, that's all."

"Yes, because it's such an imposition to spend a weekend in Paris in the springtime," the man said. Though there was a hint of sarcasm to his words he sounded more concerned, more affectionate than cross, but the sound of his companion's sigh was loud enough now to carry to Harry's ears.

"Paul, really," she said, and he had to close his eyes, because he couldn't quite believe this was real, somehow, didn't understand how this could possibly be happening, because he ached with every fiber of his being to fling aside those damnable plants and reach across the narrow chasm to where Ruth stood, enjoying the sights of Paris at sunset with a man who was not him.

 _How...how...how..._ the word rang through his mind like some great booming bell. _Of all the gin joints in all the world,_ and all of that - somehow, though Harry could not say quite how, though it seemed the most impossible thing in the world, though some piece of his mind was beginning to wonder if he were having a stroke or suffering some equally cataclysmic sort of break with reality, it seemed to him that Ruth, his beautiful, passionate, broken Ruth, was standing no more than two meters away from him, spending a few days in the same hotel, in the room right next to his own.

"I just meant," she said, sounding somewhat prickly, "that I don't have to attend this conference tomorrow, and I could be home with the stack of term papers I have to review and my cats and my pajamas, and instead of you've brought me here, and all my work is going to pile up, and -"

"And you will spend a few hours in the Louvre tomorrow like you wanted and then I will take you out and we will have a beautiful evening together and on Sunday you can drag me anywhere in this city you want to go," the man - Paul - told her in a wheedling sort of voice.

Harry, somewhat irrationally, felt a sudden desire to punch the man square on the jaw, but he kept his fist tight by his side and tried to focus on his breathing, tried to calm his racing thoughts. Did he dare call out to her, go racing through his suite to bang upon her door, shout the bloody hotel down until they were face to face and he was at last allowed the opportunity to speak to her, properly, the way he so longed to do?

"Anywhere?" Ruth asked, and dejection and disappointment began to slow the racing of Harry's heart. Her voice was playful and soft, and though it seemed a bit forced he could tell that she felt a certain fondness for this man, this Paul. This was hardly the first time Harry had been reunited with Ruth only to discover that her affections belonged to another man, and given how badly things had gone the last time he was suddenly entirely certain that calling out to her would be the worst possible course of action.

It didn't matter, really, because at that very moment the door behind him slid open, and Rebecca made her appearance.

* * *

"Anywhere," Paul told her firmly, a decadent sort of promise to his voice, and so Ruth smiled and tilted her chin so that he might press a kiss to her cheek before slipping back into their suite. She sighed and leaned against the wrought iron railing, looking out at the beauty of Paris at sunset. It wasn't Paul's fault, she supposed; he thought he had done something quite romantic in inviting her here, had never imagined, even for a moment, that this city held such sorrow for her. It wasn't Paul who was supposed to offer her his arm as they walked along the river, wasn't Paul whose eyes were supposed to crinkle as he smiled at her in the wavering candlelight of a romantic dinner, wasn't his body she was supposed to fall asleep wrapped around in the dark of a beautiful night, but it wasn't his fault that she was here with the wrong man, and she could hardly blame him.

It wasn't his fault, after all, that he was not Harry.

 _Damn him,_ she thought reflexively, the way she always did when Harry came to mind. Damn him for his impetuous nature, his impulsiveness, his horrible sense of timing, his misplaced nobility. Damn him for being the only man who held any sway over her heart, no matter how much time had passed.

At the time, Ruth had known that leaving was the only sensible option. Harry had thrown away his career, committed treason to save her life, and even if what he had done could be in any way considered justified the truth remained that she could not stay with Five. The whispers would follow her everywhere she went, the sneers, the derision, the deliberate misunderstandings, the people watching her walk past and saying _her? All this, for her?_ They would say that Harry was weak, that she had used him, ensnared him, would never understand that on that terrible day Ruth had _wanted_ to die. And if by some miracle Harry had been reinstated, she wasn't sure she'd ever be able to look him in the eye again, not after the terrible things she'd said to him, the way her fear and her anger had so spectacularly boiled over. The service sent her home that day, and Harry never came to see her, and after a week she packed her things and left, and she never looked back.

Actually, she supposed, that wasn't entirely true. She looked back all the time, whenever she stepped into a crowded lift with a man who wore Harry's cologne, whenever she watched the news and felt her heart constrict at the latest disaster, whenever she passed a broad-shouldered and slightly balding man in the street. She looked back when Paul held her close, and her traitorous mind reminded her how it had felt to fall asleep with Harry's arms wrapped around her instead. But Harry had made his choices, and Ruth had made her own, and there would be no changing course now. Whatever had become of him she could not say, and she knew in her heart that this was for the best.

To her left a row of potted plants shielded her from the view of the balcony next door, but they did little to muffle the sound of voices, and those voices carried to her, now, offered her a welcome distraction from morose thoughts of love and loss. She tilted her head, and listened closely.

"Really, Harry," the woman was saying softly. "You're supposed to be on holiday. Put the phone away and come downstairs. Let's go and have dinner."

At the sound of the name _Harry_ Ruth had sighed, softly, thinking of her Harry, of all the mistakes and all the regrets and all the love and loss between them, but then the Harry next door was speaking, and the breath froze in her lungs.

"It's one call, Rebecca," he was saying. "Why don't you go on down, and I'll join you in a minute."

 _How...how...how…_

The question swirled round and round through Ruth's mind; she reached out and clutched the railing for support, nearly undone by the sound of Harry's - _her_ Harry's _-_ voice coming from no more than two meters away. Harry, _the_ Harry, _her_ Harry, her very heart, the only man who had ever broken her in half, the only one who had ever mended her again, that titan of a man who had encouraged her to greatness, pushed her, challenged her, pressed her, molded her into a new creature, one almost entirely of his own making - _damn him -_ and he was standing just beside her, on a balcony, in Paris, at sunset. It was so far outside the realm of possibility that Ruth was beginning to wonder if perhaps she had gone quite mad.

"When have you ever finished a phone call in a minute?" the woman, Rebecca, asked him, and though Ruth supposed she ought to have felt a bit jealous that he was here with some other woman, that he had spilled his honeyed promises into someone else's ear, she supposed she could not fault him when in the room behind her another man lounged on the bed, scrolling through his emails and waiting for her to join him so that they could go down to dinner together.

"Ten minutes, I promise," Harry said wearily.

It would seem that this was sufficient for his companion for Ruth heard the sounds of her footsteps retreating, heard the opening and the closing of the door, heard Harry's soft sigh of relief.

The tension that coiled within her in that moment was unlike anything Ruth had ever felt before. Her heart pounded in her chest, her blood rushing through her ears so loudly she could no longer hear the hum of the traffic below. Harry was here, alone for the moment, and she was here, alone as well, and with each heartbeat the seconds were ticking inexorably on, the opportunity for action drifting further away. What would he say, she wondered, if she called out to him now? Would he curse her, scorn her, throw himself at her mercy? What could she possibly say to him? How could she ever explain the grief, the sorrow, the devastation he had caused her, and the way the thought of him even now filled her heart with hope despite all the ruin that had come before? Did she dare disturb his quiet getaway?

 _Maybe it would be best,_ she thought morosely, _if I just let him be._

The decision was taken out of her hands, however, for in that moment Harry spoke.

"Hello, Ruth," he said softly. His voice did not carry far, but then it did not need to; he was hidden behind his own screen of foliage, but perhaps he, like Ruth, was facing it now, wishing he could vanish it with a single thought, wanting to reach through and touch her as she longed to touch him. How he had come to realize she was standing there Ruth could not say, but in that moment she wasn't entirely sure that it mattered.

"Hello, Harry," she answered.


	2. Chapter 2

The air was close, cool but more invigorating than chilling, a gentle breeze ruffling the soft curls at the nape of his neck while his heart cried out a steady beat of _Ruth Ruth Ruth._ She was _here,_ as impossible, as incomprehensible as that thought seemed to be, and with every second that passed Harry wrangled with himself, certain one moment that he ought to abandon her as she had done to him and go down to have dinner with Rebecca, and equally certain in the very next breath that if he could not reach out and touch Ruth with his own two hands he must surely die. He had decided, earlier, that he would not speak to her, that he would leave her alone to her new man and her own devices, but then Rebecca had appeared, and he had known, somehow, though he could not say how, that Ruth must have heard his voice, that she must have realized what was afoot, and he had been unable to remain silent. It was one thing to slide away from her without her knowledge, to suggest to Rebecca that they find a new hotel, start over again on the other side of town, but it would be altogether more cruel to turn his back on Ruth when she knew full well that he was there, and he could never be deliberately cruel to her.

So he had called out to her, and she to him, and now they stood, shielded from one another by a veil of greenery, able to hear one another though he could not see her face. He yearned to break through that veil, to reach out with both hands to grasp hold of her, this woman he loved more than his own life, who meant everything to him, and yet he held himself back, knowing she had left him, willfully, determinedly. It was Ruth who chosen the method and the manner of their separation, and having once before stuck his hand into the flame and been wretchedly scorched he was loath to do it again.

"Is that really you, Harry?" Ruth's floated to him, only faintly muffled by the the greenery that hid her from view.

"It is," he answered, wondering if she could tell, even now, after all this time, all this space between them, how emotion had made his voice ragged with uncertain longing.

"This is a dream."

He did not answer her, for her voice had been soft, bemused, terrified, and he was almost sure that she had only been speaking to herself, musing aloud on the strangeness of this most unexpected meeting. For his part Harry heartily agreed; such a gentle, hopeful coincidence did not seem to be the sort of blessing bestowed upon mortal man, and he was half-convinced that soon he must surely wake to find himself back in his bed in London, the soft sound of her voice fading away as he blinked his eyes and reality asserted itself once more.

And yet, still, the seconds passed, and no such awakening came. She lingered with him here in this moment so full of beautiful promise and terrible consequence. He wanted, more than anything, to see her, to gaze upon her face and take note of the passage of time, to with his own observation determine whether she was happy with this path she had chosen, this new man, this new life. He wanted, more than anything, to look into her eyes, so bright and blue and expressive, those eyes that seemed to contain her very soul. He wanted, oh he wanted, _her._

"Can I," Ruth started to say, but then she caught herself, drawing in a sharp breath, and Harry's heart, wrecked and shattered though it was, leapt in his chest, still hopeful, after all this time. There was no need for her to finish her sentence, to ask the question that had begun to trip so hesitantly from her lips; he knew what it was she wanted of him, and he would give her anything she asked.

"The door is unlocked," he told her.

A second passed, then two, his whole world shifting and swaying, hanging in the balance as Ruth deliberated with herself. She wanted to come to him and he wanted to let her, but there were obstacles yet to face. Rebecca had gone down to dinner, but two or three of the ten minutes she'd allotted him had already passed, and if he lingered too long she might well come looking for him. Ruth's man had retreated to their suite, and to reach Harry she would first have to pass through their room, would have to see him and make some excuse before stepping next door. Harry did not doubt that Ruth could navigate that conversation deftly; she was a born spook, after all, her natural talents for solving riddles and disarming opponents with a guileless facade supplemented by years of hard lessons learned while living on the run in exile. With a jolt Harry realized she had been two years away from him, just as she had spent two years far from his side after Cotterdam, before she'd come hurtling back into his world, shrouded in grief and yet more beautiful than even his recollections of her. Two years had been enough, before, to open her heart to him, to encourage her to make room for him, to find the courage to step from the precipice and into his open arms. He wondered now, with some trepidation, what lessons the last two years had taught her.

"Give me two minutes," she said, and then he heard the opening of her door as she slipped once more into her suite.

Though it was folly, though he knew such hopes were unfounded and would likely only increase his devastation when he found her cold and angry, still, as she had been when she left him, Harry could not help but smile as he stepped into his own room to wait for her arrival. Ruth, and here, and coming to see him; nothing else seemed to matter, in that moment.

* * *

Ruth's heart was racing as she stepped once more into her room, her thoughts awhirl with _Harry_. Harry who she hated, Harry who she loved, Harry who remained the only man who had ever truly understood her. There was no question in her mind that she must go to him, face him, speak her piece and listen to his own wounded heart, but what would come after that she could not say. They had not parted on the best of terms; anger and terror had left her loose-lipped and raw, and she had, quite without wanting to, thrown wide the gates of her heart and let him catch a glimpse of the yawning chasm of darkness that had claimed her. All her life Ruth had tried to keep that darkness at bay, to fight back against the black dog nipping at her heels, but with so many of her friends dead, a headstone in a graveyard in Essex already bearing her name, her mother still mourning her loss and the very fate of the world weighed against something as inconsequential as her own small, disappointing life, she had been unable to win that battle. She had given in, had accepted that death was coming for her, and Harry had snatched even that away, in his selfish pursuit of her, a woman who was weary and frightened enough to reject his proposal, to roll out of his bed and walk away and yet still held some sway over him.

She did not know what she could possibly say to him, only that she must speak, must see his face and tell him all the things she'd held back before, tell him how he had wounded her that day, that day he'd saved her life against her own wishes, that day he'd looked in her eyes and said _it's my turn_ and gone to face his own demise and left her in ruins. But there was an obstacle she would have to face first; Paul, gentle and kind, stretched out on the bed with his laptop resting against his belly, scanning through his emails and utterly oblivious to the turmoil that gripped her.

 _What have I done?_ Ruth asked herself as she looked at him now. At first, she had been determined not to repeat the mistakes of the past, to bring an innocent man into her bed and lead him to her doom as she had done years before. That was a lesson hard learned, a little boy with an angel's face left orphaned and alone for the sake of Ruth's own selfish heart. And yet, she was young enough, still, only 42, her life not yet over, much as some days she rather felt that it was. The need for connection, a hand to hold, was too strong to be denied, and when Paul, with his warm brown eyes and soft greying hair, the little lines on his face telling the story of a thousand easy smiles, had insinuated himself into her life, had brought her coffee and flowers and laughed with her as they talked of books, their students, the mundanity of a normal life, she had been unable to resist. She'd told herself that Harry was gone, that she had abandoned his world, that there would not be another blood-soaked miraculous reunion, and she had let Paul hold her, though she knew it was folly.

And now it would fall to her to do that thing she hated more than any other, and lie to him outright.

"All right?" he asked her, his eyebrow raised as he watched her over his laptop.

"I'm just tired," she answered. _Tired of the lies, tired of running, tired of feeling every day as if I'm fading into nothingness._ "I think I'll have a bath. Why don't you go on and get something to eat?"

Though he had just celebrated his fiftieth birthday there was still something decidely boyish about Paul, and one of those many sometimes juvenile qualities that both endeared him to her and left her feeling somewhat petulant was the way in which he was so ruled by his stomach. The call of a warm Parisian dinner would be too powerful for him to resist, she knew, and having been divorced for fifteen years he was quite accustomed to eating on his own. He was likewise accustomed to his lover's ever-shifting moods, and she hoped her feeble excuse would be enough to send him on his way.

It would seem that she was right, for as she turned away, shuffling through her bag as if in search of the various accoutrements she would need for her bath, she heard him close his laptop and rise to his feet. Relief washed over her, though it retreated somewhat when he stepped up behind her, wrapped his arms around her and pressed a kiss to the back of her neck.

"Do you want me to bring you something?"

 _Another life,_ she thought.

"Pain au chocolat, please," she said. They did not serve the treat in the restaurant downstairs, she knew, and she hoped that her request would send him farther afield, would buy her more time with Harry, though she hated herself for the calculation behind her words, for the way that, no matter how hard she tried, she could not shake the habits ingrained her by the long years she'd spent working in the shadows.

"Anything for you, darling," he told her winsomely. He kissed her again and then shuffled into his shoes, stepping from the room and throwing a casual _see you soon_ over his shoulder, but Ruth had already all but forgotten him. The time had come, and Harry was waiting, and she could think of nothing else save seeing him again. His weathered face, his broad shoulders, his sorrowful eyes; the picture of him floated before her, Harry as he had been when she last she saw him, broken, shattered, laid low by grief and yet still going to face his doom with his back straight like any good soldier.

She forced herself to wait for one full minute, to be sure that Paul had made his way down the stairs and out of sight, and then she rushed from the room. At the doorway she paused, investigating the corridor and finding it mercifully empty of any potential witnesses. There was nothing for it now, and so she squared her shoulders and stepped out, locking the door to her room behind her before turning her feet toward Harry. His door was unlocked as he'd said it would be, and so, gathering her courage and trying valiantly to still the trembling of her hands, she opened it, stepped inside, and closed the door behind her again in one graceful movement.


	3. Chapter 3

For a moment Ruth stood frozen, rooted to the spot as she stared at Harry, and he at her. It had been a long time, such a long time, since last she'd seen him, and though she'd known it would be devastating she was wholly unprepared for the torrent of emotions that gripped her at the sight of his face, worn and weathered with sorrow and the passage of the days. Her eyes roved over his figure, the white shirt he wore open at the collar with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, his grey slacks, his strangely casual shoes. She studied his face, the trepidation in his soft, warm eyes, the way his hand twitched down by his side as if he longed to reach out to her, the way he studied her as intently as she studied him. She knew what he'd find as he looked at her, her hair longer than it had been and caught in a messy bun at the nape of her neck, her blue jeans, her black blouse, the wrinkles at the corners of her eyes and lips. She knew what he saw when he looked at her, but not what he _felt._

Was it anything like what she was feeling? Was he half as conflicted as she, torn between longing and fear, wanting to run and wanting to linger, wanting to shout, wanting to weep?

 _This was a bad idea,_ she thought suddenly, wildly. _I never should have come here._ What possible words could she say to him, now, after everything? After she had chosen, time and time again, to leave him, no matter how kind he had been to her, no matter how much he had proven himself willing to sacrifice everything for her sake? And how, _how_ could she possibly ever hope to explain that it had not been a lack of affection that sent her fleeing from his side, but an over abundance of it?

Panic began to set in, manifesting in the trembling of her hands, the racing of her heart, the sharp catch of her breath. Harry could see it, too, she realized, had discerned the course her feverish thoughts had run and even as she took an involuntary step backward he stepped towards her, like dancers standing eight feet apart.

"Ruth," he croaked. His voice was raw, and her heart was raw, everything about this moment tense and painful and sharp as a knife against skin.

"This was a bad idea, Harry," she told him softly.

Across from her he only smiled, sadly.

"Maybe," he said. "But you're here now. Why don't we talk?"

"I don't know what to say."

It was the truth, and she could not have stopped the words leaving her if she tried. Her thoughts were too chaotic for her to fathom, the task of translating the longing of her heart into words he could understand now seeming somehow quite beyond her.

"Tell me about Rachel," he said.

* * *

 _Three years earlier…_

"Tell me about Rachel," he said as she lay cocooned in his warmth, her head resting against his chest, his arms wrapped around her, their legs sliding together beneath his duvet. This had been happening more and more frequently of late; they were tracing the threads of the Nightingale conspiracy, and as with each passing day it became more and more clear that no one could be trusted they clung ever more tightly to one another. Even when everything around them had grown murky with betrayal, when even Ros and Lucas were not above suspicion, there was never any doubt in Ruth's mind that she could trust Harry with her whole heart, with every piece of herself, with her very life.

His question was a strange one, but not entirely unexpected. Harry always grew loose-lipped and talkative after sex, dragged his fingertips along the length of her spine and whispered to her words he would never dare voice in the daylight hours, and she loved it, loved knowing that she could lay claim to this soft, gentle piece of him that no one else ever got to see. It had only been a few months since she'd returned to him with a lover and a little boy in tow, having lived the last eleven months under a false name in a little village so far away. To his credit Harry had not pushed her too much, to reveal her feelings on the manner of her return, George's death; they were both of them too raw, too recently wounded, to dwell too long on such matters. Ruth didn't want to think about that now, now when she still faintly ached from the passion of Harry's attentions, when she had, however briefly, found a piece of warmth and peace to cling to, but she did not rebuff him out of hand. This was _Harry,_ she told herself, Harry who would give anything for her, who had been so kind to her, made a place for her upon her return, Harry who loved her, even if he wouldn't say those words, even if she wouldn't let him, when George was only barely cold. This was Harry, who despite the long years of her exile still cared for her so deeply, still opened his arms and his bed to her, still held her like she was precious. He was asking, in his own hesitant way, for her to share herself with him, and she felt she owed him that much, to tell him the truth of the life she'd lived, however briefly, in that sun-drenched paradise.

"Oh, Rachel was very boring," she said. She meant to sound flippant, but the words just came out sad. _Rachel,_ George and Nico had called her, until their mad flight to London, until she'd had to tell them that her name was _Ruth_ , that she was not who she'd said she was. In that moment George had looked at her like he'd never seen her before, and in a way Ruth supposed that was true. Rachel and Ruth were very different women.

"She came to Cyprus because she wanted to live somewhere warm. Her husband had just died, you see, and she was looking for a change."

Beneath her Harry hummed, ducked his head to press a kiss against the top of her hair, his arms tightening their grip, just a little. There was no need to explain why she'd chosen that particular backstory for her legend; Ruth had been grieving the loss of him, the loss of her whole life, and she knew now that he had been grieving, too, had been as miserable without her as she was without him.

"She worked as a medical clerk because she wasn't really qualified to do anything else. She didn't have very many friends, kept to herself, mostly."

Harry kissed her again; when he got started like this, he often couldn't stop. Though he could at times be downright poetic, could rant and rave with Shakespearean eloquence, he was rather crap at talking about his emotions. But Ruth heard the words he could not say, couched in his gentle display of affection; how he grieved to think of her all alone, how it hurt him to think that she had not been able to find friends to support her. She wanted to tell him that this was nothing new, that people had always been something of a mystery to her, that the best friends she had made in her adult life had all been spooks and they were now all dead, with the exception of Harry and Malcolm. She couldn't remember the last time she'd gone out for a meal with a friend, had a phone conversation that did not revolve around terror and politics and the end of the bloody world, but she did not tell Harry this for she felt there was no need to wound him further with thoughts of her woeful social life.

"And George?" he prodded her gently.

Ruth drew in a sharp breath, transported for a moment back to the warehouse, that terrible, fateful day when everything had come crumbling down. He had prompted her in much the same way then, desperate to know how this man had come to share her life, but at the time she had been too terrified, too confused to speak the truth to him while they sat with their hands bound and their fates so uncertain. The last thing she wanted was to speak to Harry about George; she tried her very best, when she was in Harry's bed, to avoid thoughts of George altogether, to keep the guilt and the grief at bay and just be grateful that Harry still cared so deeply for her after everything that had passed between them. But he had asked, and she felt herself bound to answer.

"Oh, Rachel didn't want to see him, at first." It was easier, somehow, to keep talking about Rachel, as if it was someone else's life, someone else's lover. "But he was a doctor at the hospital, and she couldn't avoid him. He was very nice to her. He was the only person who was nice to her. And his wife had died, so he didn't mind so very much that Rachel didn't love him. He didn't love her, either."

 _But he's dead just the same._

"Sometimes you just need someone," Harry said quietly. "Someone to touch. To remind you that you're alive."

For the first time since this had begun Ruth raised her head, and looked him in the eye.

"Did you find someone, Harry?"

She couldn't say what she wanted his answer to be. Part of her hoped it would be no, that she would find out once and for all that he had been undeterred in his love of her, that he had clung to her memory and remained faithful though he had no way of knowing when - or even if - they would be reunited again. And yet, part of her hoped that he had found some obliging woman, wanted to know that he had not been as terribly lonely as she feared he had been, wanted the relief that would come with knowing she was not the only one who had been unfaithful during their separation. Somehow she felt as if it would make everything all right, if Harry had taken a lover, as if that would level the playing field between them, lessen the weight of her transgression.

"No," he said softly. "There was only one woman I wanted, and I spent my nights missing her."

* * *

 _Present day…_

Ruth caught her lip between her teeth at the sound of Harry's question. The memories washed over her, thick and fast; the warmth of his hands, the tender cadence of his voice, the way he comforted her, reassured her, _loved_ her. Somehow the time they'd spent apart had dulled her recollections of him, but it was all rushing back now, the need, the fervent longing he inspired in her. It was hard to reconcile it, the bloom of hope and love they'd cultivated during the early days of their affair, and all the bitterness that came after their tumultuous falling out. But he had asked a question, and perhaps in answering it she might find her way back to level ground.

"Oh, Rachel is very boring," she said.

There was no denying it, the flicker of recognition in Harry's eyes, as he recalled the conversation they'd had a lifetime ago, when they loved each other, when they were solid, when neither of them had ever had cause to doubt the other.

 _Oh, how things have changed._

"She's a teacher. At the University of Bradford." Harry's lips turned down in the ghost of a frown, and if this conversation had been taking place three years before Ruth might have teased him, just a little, for his Oxbridge snobbery. He was a study in contradictions, was Harry, for while he had spearheaded a campaign to bring in recruits from outside Oxbridge while he was involved in recruitment for Five he still clung to the pride of every old Oxonian. Recruits should be brought in from all quarters, he believed, but nowhere could provide so fine an education as his alma mater. Perhaps he thought that as an old Oxonian herself Bradford was beneath her, but Ruth had chosen it for her own reasons. "English," she added.

"Not Classics?" Harry asked, the frown disappearing as he almost - but not quite - smiled at her.

"They don't offer a Classics degree."

He harrumphed and she let him, for they had gone down this road many times before, lamented the way Ruth's chosen field of study was slowly dying, as interest in the ancient Greeks and Romans faded in favor of computers and chemistry. _We need all sorts,_ Ruth had told him in another life, and he had answered _but if we do not know our history we will surely repeat it. The Romans believed their empire could never fall, and the Goths proved just how wrong they were. If it could happen to them it could happen to us. We ought to take heed._

She dwelled on those words, for a moment. That night, three years before, when she had fallen asleep with Harry's around her, she had done so certain that they would never wound one another, that he would always be there for her, as he had been before. In that moment, Ruth had believed they were solid, unshakeable, that they had survived the worst possible calamity and come through it still holding one another's hands. She had not known, then, what horror was waiting for them.

"And Paul?" he asked.

"Why don't we sit down, Harry?"

If this was what he wanted, if he wanted to hash out every little thing that had transpired since she'd left him, Ruth supposed they ought to at least be comfortable. He could ask his questions, and she would answer them, but she had more than a few of her own, and she would have the truth of him before she left this place.

 _I think this will take quite some time,_ she told herself.


	4. Chapter 4

Harry could not spare a moment to be ashamed of the way he had pressed her about her new lover, not now when he was sitting with her at the little table in the corner of his hotel suite, when he could with his own eyes look upon her face and see that she was well, that she was whole, that she was more beautiful than even his recollections of her. The last time he'd seen her, Ruth's eyes had been dark, stormy, full of doubts, of fears, of anger, a rage he knew he'd earned by not trusting her, not confiding in her as he should have done. Over the last two years he had berated himself time and time again for not obliging Ruth's suspicions as regarded Lucas; at the time he had thought it was only a matter of smarting egos, his own heart wounded and not willing to listen, her heart hardened and eager to prove him wrong. He had willfully ignored her warnings, and nearly paid the ultimate price for his pride.

Now, though, she was somewhat calmer, somewhat steadier; she had almost run out the door when he first approached her, but now she had found her feet, had brought them to light at this table so that they could talk more plainly to one another. He watched her for a moment, took note of the set of her shoulders, the lift of her chin, the way she still dressed in dark colors, albeit now she wore jeans in place of her usual long skirt. Rather suddenly he was struck with the memory of the day they'd been reunited in the warehouse, how the sight of her had taken him like a punch to the gut, how despite the horror of their circumstances all he wanted in that moment was to take her in his arms, to hold her tight, to never let her go. He wanted to hold her now, again, when there were no cameras, no goons with guns, the fate of the nation not hanging in the balance, his hands free to reach out and touch her, if he wished. The only obstacles separating them now were their lovers and their wounded pride. He feared those obstacles might well be insurmountable.

"Will you tell me about Rebecca, if I tell you about Paul?" Ruth asked, and Harry very nearly laughed. It was such a Ruth thing to say, to turn the tables on him, to defy his attempts to control the conversation. She had always been clever, his Ruth, so adept at manipulating the pieces on the board, even if she didn't want to acknowledge just how skilled she was at that manipulation. How many times had she placed a phone call, murmured the right words in the right ears, saved a favor from a more powerful player for the moment when she knew she'd need it most? No institution in the country was safe from Ruth, least of all the veritable institution that was Harry Pearce himself.

"Not much to tell," Harry said honestly.

"Do you love her?"

Ruth looked almost as shocked by her question as Harry was himself. _Do you love him?_ He'd asked her that once, in a moment when he had no right to make such demands of her, to push her so hard, and her anguished response had told him that regardless of whether or not she was willing to say it out loud, the answer was _no._

"I should think you know me better than that, Ruth."

It was the truth. Perhaps it was foolish to lay all of his cards on the table so soon into this conversation, to tell her so plainly that there was only one woman he loved, and she was not sitting in the restaurant downstairs alone and waiting for him. The words hit their intended mark, for Ruth drew in a sharp breath and dropped her gaze to where her hands lay clasped together in her lap, knowing exactly what he'd meant.

"And Paul?" he pressed, for having given his own answer he very much wanted one from her. "Do you love him?"

For a moment Ruth was silent, staring at her hands, weighing her words, and Harry held his breath, knowing that his every hope and dream hung in the balance. She could end this thing between them here and now, put a stop to his questions, tell him for once and for all that there was nothing more between them than bitter memories, that he was free to spend his nights wrapped Rebecca without worrying that he was in some strange way being unfaithful to a woman who had rejected his marriage proposal and left him cold and lonely.

"I should think you know me better than that, Harry," she said softly.

* * *

 _Three years earlier…_

"I don't want to leave," she whispered, her lips brushing against the line of his jaw. Reflexively Harry tightened his grip upon her, his hand trailing up and down the smooth skin of her back.

"Then don't," he murmured. "Stay with me, Ruth. Have a shower, and some breakfast. Let me drive you in to work."

It was a lot to ask of her, he knew. She had broken things off with him once before because she feared what people might say, because she feared what would become of them if they carried on together. He did not know if she had changed her tune in the interim, if experience and the many nights she'd spent in his bed had given her reason to trust that their connection to one another could survive such petty gossip, and he had just gone and put his foot right in it. Ruth didn't respond well to pressure, he knew, and this moment might spell the end of them, but he had never been particularly good at holding himself back from her.

"What do you think they'll say, if we come in together?"

It wasn't a _no,_ and so Harry tried to take courage from her answer. Still his fingertips trailed up and down the length of her spine, his thoughts awash with _her_ , how soft, how delicate, how beautiful she was, how completely she owned him.

"I don't expect they'll say anything at all," he said. "It's hardly remarkable, that we should arrive at work at the same time. We'll still be on the Grid before the rest of the team, anyway."

"Except Tariq. I'm beginning to suspect he sleeps in the technical suite."

Harry laughed, and pressed a kiss against her forehead. "Yes, I believe you may be right."

In his arms he heard her sigh, and then felt her snuggle closer to him, soaking in the warmth they generated between them; Ruth was making no real effort to leave, and he took comfort from that fact.

"I suppose you're right," she said after a time. "They all think we're shagging anyway, and I don't think it's changed much of anything. I hate feeling like I'm sneaking about all the time."

"You are a spook, Ruth," he teased her. She shifted in his arms, propped her chin up against his chest so she could look into his eyes.

"I mean it, Harry," she said seriously. "I don't think there's any point trying to hide it, any more. I...care about you, very much, and I think at this point anyone who doesn't know that has no business being in the service."

Though he wanted very much to seem cool and calm Harry could not help but smile, just a little, to hear her say so plainly how she cared for him. It was not a confession of love, but then he hardly expected such from her, when it had only been a few months since George's death, when his Ruth had always been so reticent when it came to matters of the heart. It was instead an acknowledgment of the state of affairs between them, and one he would accept gladly. After the incident with Mani it was plain to everyone involved that Ruth was dear to him, that she was his most exploitable vulnerability, but likewise since her return it had also become apparent to anyone with eyes that he trusted her, completely, that they were a pair, always presenting a united front. Ruth was the only person who Harry allowed to enter his office without knocking, and she had a habit of finishing his sentences in the briefing room, and she was always the person he turned to first for counsel. As he saw it she was right; their coming in together would not be cause for new gossip, if it was remarked on at all, would only seem to their colleagues to be the natural end result of the connection they displayed so openly every day they worked together.

"You know I care for you, too," he said softly, choosing his words delicately. Oh, he knew already that he loved her, had known it since the very first time he took her out to dinner, but she had not been ready to hear it from him then, and he knew she was not ready to hear it from him now. She leaned forward until she could capture his lips with hers, kissing him softly, gently, a kiss without heat, and yet carrying within it a world of meaning.

"One day, Harry," she whispered, "there are some wonderful words I would like to hear you say. But not yet. Not now."

"I know," he answered, and kissed her again.

* * *

She had loved him once, this woman who sat before him now hardened by the harsh experiences of her life. Though the words had never passed her lips she had loved him, and he had felt it in the touch of her hand, the way she held him, spoke to him, trusted him with her whole heart. And his love of her likewise had always been a foregone conclusion; _it was unfair of you to love me,_ she'd told him, acknowledging outright the feelings they both knew he harbored for her. Yet here they sat, still dancing around that truth, unwilling to admit to their own failings, their own feelings.

"Rebecca works for the Home Office," he said slowly. "She's in the process of getting divorced. She wasn't looking for anything serious, and I thought perhaps we might be a good fit for each other."

Across the table from him Ruth nodded, soaking in the little information he'd given her, analyzing it, and turning her inestimable talents to picking apart his meaning.

"She's changed her mind though, hasn't she? About not wanting anything serious."

Harry raised an incredulous eyebrow at her, but Ruth just shrugged, calm and unapologetic. "She seemed upset about you working on this trip, not spending enough time with her," she explained.

 _I've always said she was smarter than me,_ Harry thought, feeling somehow both proud and chastised. Over the years he had watched Ruth grow from a strange, somewhat insecure girl into a woman who knew her own worth, who was unconcerned with other people's opinions of her. She had learned to stand tall beneath the weight of the burdens she carried, not to shy away from those qualities of hers that seemed to disquiet other people. And she had learned how to read _him,_ had come to know him better than anyone else could ever hope to do.

"Paul said we could just have fun," she told him after a moment. "Just get to know one another, keep things casual." She sighed and ran her fingers through her hair. "I should have known better."

"I didn't think you knew how to do anything casually, Ruth."

He hadn't meant it as a criticism, but he could see at once that she took it as such.

"I don't think you get to comment," she started to say, but he bristled at her sharp tone, feeling confined by the walls that seemed to close in around them, the ticking of the clock, the way they seemed destined to carry out all their conversations through riddles and innuendo.

"Didn't you just say I should know you better than that, Ruth?"

She was on her feet in a moment, her face like a thundercloud, her feet already turning toward the door. Harry couldn't help it; he leapt up as well, crossed around the table as she started to speak.

"This was a bad idea," she said, still making for the door, but Harry caught up to her, reached out to stop her. He'd only meant to catch hold of her wrist, but they were both moving, and somehow he wound up holding her hand.

The warmth of her skin sent an electric shock through him, a thousand memories far more pleasant than the ones they were making on this night flooding through his mind at once. For her part Ruth froze midstep, her gaze flickering down to where his palm pressed against hers.

"Please," he said. "There are so many things I have to tell you."

"What if she comes back, Harry? What happens when she finds us here? We don't have the time-"

"Walk with me," he interrupted her, the words spilling out of him on impulse. "Walk with me, down by the river, the way we used to do. I don't want to talk about Rebecca and Paul. I don't think they matter, and I don't think you do either."

Her expression was pained, but she did not try to pull away from him.

"It's cold," she murmurred, but he knew her heart wasn't really in it, that she was protesting more out of habit than anything else.

"I have a jumper you can wear. Please, Ruth. Please don't leave. Not yet."


	5. Chapter 5

Ruth wasn't entirely sure how this had happened, how she had gone from resigned to leaving Harry, never to see him again, to walking with him beside her. She hadn't intended for this to happen, and yet Harry, passionate, stubborn, inexorable Harry had swept her up in a wave of activity, had bundled her into his heavy cream jumper and out the door before she could lodge a word of protest. Perhaps if she had really struggled, if she had voiced a stern objection, he would have conceded to her wishes, but she had been mostly silent, for much as her heart was aching she was desperately curious to hear what he had to say. _There are so many things I need to tell you,_ those were his words, and Ruth, to her shame, had been unable to turn away.

There wasn't much to hear, at present. They were strolling along at a leisurely pace, the lights of the city sparkling up at them from the swirling surface of the river, the spring air cool enough to make Ruth grateful for the warmth of the jumper, regardless of her feelings towards the man who had given it to her. It was, of course, several sizes too big, hanging down well below her hips, the sleeves rolled back and yet still tumbling down around her fingertips. It made her feel strangely vulnerable, this physical reminder of the difference between herself in Harry, the strange flutter in her belly as she walked cocooned in a softness, a warmth, that smelled so faintly of his cologne. She felt small, and exposed, somehow, as if he could tell just by looking at her that she took comfort in clinging to this piece of him, as if by dressing her in his own clothing he had somehow laid claim to her whole being. It was foolish, Ruth knew; she'd given her heart to him years before. Wearing his jumper hardly changed the state of affairs between them.

He wasn't speaking, though, just walking along with his hands tucked in his pockets, his chin held high, eyes gazing straight ahead, though as he walked he drifted towards her and away, again and again, as if he were fighting the pull of gravity, drawing him ever closer to her. Ruth knew rather how that felt, for the back of her hand kept brushing against his, quite without her permission, and she seemed utterly unable to stop it.

"Do you remember what you said to me that day?" he asked her finally. Still he would not look at her, but that wouldn't do; if Harry really wanted to do this, to have it out with her, once and for all, she wanted him to look in her eyes when he broke her heart afresh.

"What day?" she replied, a little bit of the weariness she could not hide coloring her tone. She reached out to stop him with one hand gentle on his arm; he froze at once, turning to her sharply, and she could not help but take a step back, startled by the depth of emotion in his eyes. Absently she reached up to brush a wayward lock of hair back from her brow, and Harry's eyes followed the progress of her hand, hungry and uncertain.

"The day you left me," he answered.

* * *

 _Three years earlier…_

They were walking, as they so often did, by the river. It was a beautiful day, warm for early spring, and the paper cup of tea Ruth clutched in her hands warded off what little chill remained in the air. Somehow, miraculously, they had both been free to steal a few minutes for themselves at the lunch hour, and their steps had led them to Southbank, to the crush of people, the sound of music filtering out from somewhere, the rush of the Thames. Though no words had been spoken they slowed to a halt as one, and Harry turned, leaning against the low stone wall with his back to the river and his eyes on her face, her own watching him closely. His face; _oh,_ but she loved that face, loved the way the corners of his eyes would crinkle with affection when he looked at her, the way his full lips would pout so adorably when he was trying to get his way, the story told by every line and imperfection, a story of life hard lived, a soul that endured. His soul, bound to hers, inextricably, forever.

"Do you remember that day?" he asked her softly, watching her carefully.

She stood just in front of him, her back towards the people milling about on the pavement, her eyes fixed on his. There was no need for her to ask for clarification; she knew what day he meant, the only day he could be thinking of as they walked along the riverside. The day she left him, the day he came to her with desperation in his eyes, the day she kissed him with everything she had and turned away, though her heart was aching. The day everything changed.

"Some days I can't remember anything else," she answered.

Though she berated herself for it she could not help but drop her chin and look down at her toes; it was too much, sometimes, the depth of his gaze, the way he could with a single look read her every thought, the way he revealed his own feelings to her so plainly, when to everyone else he presented the facade of a closed door. She _wanted_ to face him, to let him see how she was feeling, how she would always feel, about him, about leaving him, about coming back, and yet in the moment her courage had fled, and she had looked away. It did not seem to matter to Harry, for he reached for her then, his hands on her hips, drew her in close to him, pressed his forehead against her own. For a moment or two they stood like that, unspeaking, noses brushing, the same air passing back and forth between them.

"It broke my heart, to watch you go," he whispered.

"It broke my heart to leave," she answered in a voice as low and sad as his own had been.

"Perhaps there could have been another way-"

"There was no other way," Ruth cut across him firmly. She could not make space in her heart for such lament, could not entertain the thoughts of _what if_ , could not bear it, for she feared she would not survive such grief. Two years lost, George's life lost, pain and blood and chaos, the chasm that had grown up between her heart and Harry's, a chasm they were slowly crossing, though sorrow slowed their steps; she could not dwell on it too long, what might have been, _if only._ There was no future, in _what ifs_ and _maybe thens,_ and Ruth was tired of living in the past.

"I had to save you," she said. "You were in _jail._ We were running out of time. I couldn't leave you in there, Harry. We needed you, on the Grid. We always will. I'm expendable, but you aren't."

"You aren't expendable," he told her, his voice dripping with heat, with passion, "not then, and not now. Not to me. You never were."

He meant those words, she knew. He had missed her, pined for her, as she had for him, had been more than willing to trade his freedom for hers. Somehow she had always known that, almost from the very start, from the moment Tom came to her with words she knew had been handed down to him from Harry, told her that they knew she had been spying on them and yet still they had need of her services. He would do anything for her, and this was perhaps his greatest flaw, that he could so willfully, so foolishly place one woman above all his other concerns. In her heart Ruth believed she was not worth such sacrifice, and she prayed, most fervently, that he would never again be placed in the position to make such a choice. Try though she might, however, she could not shake the feeling that somewhere above her head a clock was ticking, counting down the minutes until they once more faced their own ruination.

"I know," she said, because she did know, because she did not know what else to say.

And then, despite the fact they stood embracing in the broad light of day on a busy stretch of pavement, Harry leaned in, and kissed her soundly, and she let him, even though it was foolish, even though it was dangerous. She let him, because she loved him. _God help me._

* * *

He was trying, very hard, to control his urge to shout at her, to kiss her, to stomp his feet in frustration. There were so many emotions swirling inside his chest he could hardly name them all, and yet he knew that what he felt foremost when he looked at her now was desire. Not just the desire to lead her back to his hotel room, strip them both bare and banish their regrets and their sorrows with the slow winding of their bodies together, but a stronger, altogether fiercer sort of need. Standing there before him with her back straight and her chin lifted proudly and her eyes so full of grief she was the loveliest thing he had ever seen in his entire life. The heavy jumper she wore - _his_ jumper, and there was no denying what that did to him, seeing her in his clothes - only emphasized her diminutive stature, the fine curve of her legs in her tight jeans beneath its hem, her delicate hands swimming beneath the rolled back sleeves, the flash of her neck above the collar. She was small, and delicate, he knew; oh, she had faced challenges that would have broken strong men in half and come out the other side intact, but her heart was an altogether different sort of beast. Her spirit endured, but her heart was fragile as a bird in a cage, longing for freedom and sunlight and yet so easily frightened, so hard to approach. She was beautiful, and _here_ , and now he had done it, had reminded her of the day they fell apart, the way they fell apart. Whatever this was, whatever they were doing, it might well come tumbling down around his ears this very moment, and yet he had pressed his cause, for he could not bear to have her near and not tell her the truth.

"I said it was unfair of you to love me."

And wasn't it strange, that she could face him now, look him in the eye while with a few simple words she ripped open once more the wounds that had laid festering for a year and more while they languished so far from one another. She had been a shy girl, before, uncertain as to her place, her role in the hierarchy, feigning deference when the moment called for it, but there was no hesitation in her now. Ruth had come into her own, and he was left stunned by awe and desperation need.

"It was, Harry," she added before he could speak. "You weighed my life against the future of the whole world, and you chose me. That was unfair."

He sighed, lifted one hand from his pocket to rub at his weary eyes. Of course this was the direction he had chosen for their conversation, the path he wanted to take, and of course it had come back to this. Somehow Ruth had never quite understood her own worth, had always lacked the faith in herself that Harry carried in abundance. And added to that was the bitter truth that she did not know, truly, the choice Harry had made that day. He had been forced to lie to his team, to protect them all, to protect the secret he had sworn to safeguard for all the rest of his days, and though it had grieved him at the time, Ruth had been included in the lie. What he had not foreseen was her sudden disappearance, the way she vanished without a trace before he could tell her the truth.

 _Well,_ he told himself, _she's here now._

"Albany doesn't work."


	6. Chapter 6

_Albany doesn't work._

Three simple words, and yet they set off a roar loud as a hundred fighter jets in Ruth's mind. Dizzy, overwhelmed she spun away from him, grasping the railing with both hands, holding on for dear life as if the tumult inspired by Harry's declaration would be sufficient to send her hurtling from the bridge to the dark sparkling water below. How could it be, she asked herself desperately as her whole body trembled and she blinked back tears, that she could have spent the last year or more sunk in a fog of terror, convinced that the very world stood on the brink of disaster for her sake? How could it be that _Harry,_ Harry who loved her, who had proposed marriage to her, who had traded his honor for her life could have lied to her about something so vital, so momentous?

Rage and relief tore at her, left her spinning and breathless. She wanted to strike his face and curse him for betraying her trust, wanted to fling her arms around his neck and thank him for removing this burden she had carried for so long now, and in the moment she was not sure which impulse would win. Millions of people would not die for her sake, and for that she was grateful, but Harry had _lied_ to her, and she could not reconcile his love of her, nor hers for him, with that bitter truth. Always it had been the lies Ruth hated most, the one thing about her life in the service that had been hardest to bear - well, after the loss of her friends, it had been perhaps the _second_ hardest - and Harry knew that. His arms had been a haven for her, a place where she could rest secure in the knowledge that no matter what he said to anyone else, he would always tell her the truth. For so long knowing that Harry trusted her implicitly, above all others, had been her one comfort, the one reassurance that kept her in place upon the wall. And now that touchstone, that central fact of her life, had been turned on its ear.

Harry had _lied._

"You lied to me," she breathed, hardly able to comprehend the words.

"I had no choice," he told her softly, reaching out to touch her with a gentle hand, but Ruth jerked away, breathing like a bellows.

"You had _every_ choice," she hissed.

* * *

 _Three years earlier…_

"I had no choice, Ruth," he said softly.

She stared at him, the slump of his shoulders, his ragged breathing, and tried very hard not to weep. She knew he meant it, knew he believed it, but she could not stand to hear those words from him, not now when her very soul lay cracked and bleeding.

They were standing together on a bridge overlooking the Thames, side-by-side and trying very hard not to look at one another. It was only a week, since George's death, since Ruth had been forced to send Nico home, and the grief she felt was all-consuming, bitter and black and inescapable. Perhaps it was madness, the way she clung to her sorrow, but she wanted to feel it, every ounce of pain and self-recrimination, for she knew from experience that feeling anything, even something as terrible as self-hatred, was better than feeling nothing at all. So long as she could still shed tears for the man she'd loved, the man who had died for the sake of that love, she knew that she was still human. More human than Harry and the rest of the spooks, she suspected, for they sloughed off such burdens as a duck might let water roll of its back, continued on as if nothing were amiss no matter how great a calamity they had faced. Or caused.

She wanted to hate Harry, in this moment. She wanted to hate him for confiding in her, for setting in motion the circumstances that had led them to this point, wanted to hate him for the choices he had made, the role he had played in turning her life upside down. She wanted to hate him for all that he was, for all that he had done, for the love he still bore her. It would have been so much easier, if only she could hate him.

And yet she could not. Though in some ways she blamed him, blamed him for not divulging his secrets to Mani, for not trying harder to save George's life, the part of her that would always be a spook knew better. There had been no other way; a load of weapons grade uranium and the lives if could take far outweighed one man, one child. Even her man, her child, were not worth more than the fate of thousands. Harry knew it, and Ruth did, too, no matter how her tattered, confused heart might try to ignore that fact.

On this day he had come to her, invited her for a walk knowing that she had not seen or spoken to anyone in days, that she did not leave the little flat he'd secured for her as often as an otherwise mentally stable woman would have done. He was trying, in his own way, to offer her comfort, to help her to heal. That was all well and good, she supposed; it was nice to stretch her legs, to breathe in the fresh air, to bask in the sounds of the city. What she could not abide, what caused her such grief, was the fact that he was also trying, in his way, to apologize to her. It was an apology she was not yet ready to hear.

 _I had no choice,_ he'd told her, and though perhaps he was right Ruth found that she still wanted to shout at him, to plead with him, to screech for all to hear that he'd had every choice. Her mind had been spinning for days now, asking the same questions over and over again, replaying the events that had torn her asunder and trying to locate the moment when it all went wrong. What else could he have done, under the circumstances? How could he have changed the course of their fate?

"Surely you can see that-"

"You could have sent them somewhere else," Ruth insisted suddenly. "You could have told them it was at Portman Down, or that you'd given it to the Americans, or that you'd stashed it under bloody Westminster. You could have sent them on a wild goose chase-"

"And they would have known I was lying at once, and god knows what they have done then."

He was right, _damn him._ Mani and his men had already searched the facility in Norfolk, perhaps they would have looked in any other logical place as well, and perhaps any attempt at obfuscation would only have made Mani cross, would only have sped up the inevitable violence he intended for them.

"You could have told him the truth, maybe Ros and Lucas-"

"Ros and Lucas had no idea where the uranium had been moved, and I would have had no way to warn them where Mani was headed," he pointed out. He was growing frustrated with her; she could hear it in his voice, see it in the set of his shoulders. "And besides, Ruth, you have to know Mani was not planning to let us walk away. Even if we'd told him the truth. I had to play for time, and I did the best I could."

And though she hated to admit it, though she wanted more than anything to go on arguing with him, Ruth knew that in that moment he was telling her the truth. There had been no other option, no other way to save them from calamity, and what Harry had done, smashing the laptop, letting Mani dangle until the last possible second, was the only course he could have taken, under the circumstances. Dimly she recalled the moments just before Lucas and his team had arrived and saved their skins; Harry had been about to say something else, about to try another tactic to save Nico's life. What would that have been, she asked herself now. How had he intended to save the day? Did it matter, really, now that the thing was done?

 _It matters to me,_ she thought.

"What would you have done, Harry?" she asked him softly. "If Mani had killed Nico, if Lucas hadn't arrived, if it was down to just you and me? What would you have done?"

For the first time since this conversation had begun she turned to face him, and found him watching her with anguish in his eyes. Once, in another lifetime, she had loved those eyes, and the man behind them. _Before,_ before Mani, before Cotterdam, Harry had spent so much time watching her, and she had come to recognize the nuance of his every emotion, revealed to her in the warmth of his eyes, the way the little wrinkles at their corners would crinkle when she did something that made him smile, the way their color would darken almost to black when he wanted her, as he had done that night at Havensworth, even when she was pulling herself away from him. Now she looked in those eyes, and she saw the same grief, the same fear, the same longing that swirled within her own heart.

"I would have rather died myself than see any harm come to you," he breathed.

Ruth did begin to weep, then, for she had heard his words, and she knew them to be true. There was nothing Harry would not do for her sake, nothing except let her go.

* * *

"Ruth-" he started to say, no doubt intending to defend himself and the choices he had made, but Ruth was having none of it.

"You _unbelievable_ bastard," she gasped.

He had been standing behind her, concern and doubt rolling off of him in waves so powerful that even through her own torrent of emotions she had been able to discern his discontent. When she spoke he let loose a short, gasping sort of laugh and stepped up beside her, his hands clasping the railing in a mirror image of her own, his eyes staring out across the water just as hers were doing, the pair of them so close and yet not touching, not looking at one another, unwilling and unable to cross the chasm he had just torn between them.

"Guilty, I suppose," he said.

Ruth wanted to hit him.

"You _lied_ to me," she said again.

"Yes, Ruth, I lied. What do you want me to say? That I wish I hadn't done it?"

She turned to stare at him incredulously. _I should leave,_ she thought in a sudden panic as it all became too much to bear, but she was wearing Harry's jumper and he reached for her anyway, his hand upon her arm turning her in towards him, drawing her closer, and though she knew she ought to tear herself away she found she could do no such thing. At his urging she took a step forward, until she was tilting her head back, facing him head on, now, and drowning in the waves of sorrow and hopelessness that came washing over her at the sight of him.

"Would that be so hard?" she asked him tartly, her heart smarting from the blow he'd delivered in revealing his betrayal, lashing out for she did not know what else to do. "Is it so impossible for the great Harry Pearce to admit he made a mistake?"

"It was the right call and I'd do it again in a heartbeat," he answered with such conviction that for the first time Ruth felt her own certainty begin to crumble, just a little.

"I could not have told you the truth, Ruth. I could not risk it. I had no way of knowing what might happen, and the less you knew, the less they could blame you when it all fell apart. I had to protect you."

"I don't need your protection," she said, but even as the words passed her lips she knew they were more wish than truth. Harry's eyes softened somewhat, though he did not release his grip upon her arm.

"Of course not," he said, and it was clear to her that he was only agreeing to humor her, to put an end to their disagreement. "But you have it, just the same. I love you, Ruth, and I will always do whatever I can to keep you safe. Whatever the cost."


	7. Chapter 7

**A/N: apologies for the delay! Real life has grown hectic with the holidays approaching. I likely will not be able to post again until next week, and so I wish you all a very Merry Christmas!**

* * *

 _I love you, Ruth._

He had gone on speaking after that, but truth be told she hadn't heard him, for the world had tipped perilously under her feet and she had felt herself come completely unravelled at his quiet declaration. For years now she had known, known that he loved her, that she loved him, that they were bound together with ties neither of them could break, no matter how they tried, but this marked the very first time he had told her outright how he cared for her. _I love you,_ he'd said, as easily as if he said it every day, as if she heard it every day. And in a way, she supposed that must have been true, for she had carried the knowledge of his love in her heart for so many years, at times a knife used to wound her, at times the only talisman that kept the dark at bay. He _loved_ her, and he had told her, and now he was watching her, warily, expectantly, as if he feared what might happen next.

His hand still rested against her arm, and her eyes remained locked to his face, unable to look away, her heart pleading with her, begging her to make some sound, to speak to him, to turn and run or fall into his arms _but for God's sake, just do something._ A single, choked sort of laugh escaped her.

"Bloody hell, Harry," she breathed.

His smile was soft and sad, as at last he let his arm fall to dangle uselessly down by his side.

"Don't tell me you're surprised, Ruth," he answered, not unkindly. "I thought there was nothing you didn't know."

And for the first time that evening, perhaps the first time in years, she looked at him, _really_ looked at him, cast her thoughts back not to the many bitter disappointments, the many silent wounds, the moments of blood-soaked horror, but instead to the moments of quiet contemplation, just like this one, when she had been young and brave and he had been charming and gentle and she had first felt herself begin to fall for him. She let herself see his warm eyes and think not of loss but of the brush of his hand against her skin, let herself see the wrinkles that lined his weary face and remember not the days when he had made decisions that cost people their lives but instead recall the nights when she had traced his features with her fingertips and whispered soft words of affection into the curve of his neck. She let herself remember the first time she'd ever seen him, the span of his shoulders, the set of his mouth, the way even then he set her heart to fluttering. Harry _loved_ her, and he had not traded the fate of the world for her sake, had only torpedoed his own career. Had she not done the same for him, once? Had she not loved him enough, once, to throw her own life away? How could she curse him now for doing that which she herself had done without regret so many years before?

"What about Rebecca?" she found herself wondering aloud as she looked at him. _What about her, this woman you've let into your bed? Do you love her, do you care for her, does she think she knows you, as I once did?_

A strange look crossed his face.

"What about her?"

"You brought her to Paris, Harry," Ruth pointed out, trying very hard not to think about the man who had ventured to this city by her side, trying not to think about a gentle conversation and the hunger in Harry's eyes when he looked at her, then as now.

"Only because you refused to marry me," came his somewhat forlorn answer.

* * *

 _We couldn't be more together than we are right now,_ she'd told him once. He'd known what she meant, then, that she could offer him no more than the sneaking about, her warmth beside him as he slept a delightful but occasional occurrence. She'd kept her own house, had slept there alone as often as she ventured to his, never invited him into her sanctuary. It had been foolish of him, at the time, to ask her for more, to ask her to share more with him than she was willing to give, but Harry had never really seen reason when it came to Ruth. She was everything to him, and he wanted everything she had to give and more besides.

As he watched her now, standing along this riverside with the lights of Paris sparkling behind her, he could not help but recall that moment, could not help but recall the way his heart had pounded in that moment, that moment when he had rested his hand against her back and ducked his head to whisper his plea in her hair, that moment when everything had changed. _Marry me, Ruth,_ he had breathed against her skin, thinking only how badly he wanted her, needed her, how beautiful, how wonderful it would be to hold her hand as they strolled along a busy stretch of pavement, to have her on his arm at some flash Home Office do, to go home with her every night, to wake beside her every morning, to dream of retirement and not grimly soldier on until he died at his desk. But Ruth, his Ruth, beautiful and sad, always so sad but never so much as in that moment, had turned him down without hesitation.

 _There have been thousands of moments…_

The memory of her words washed over him, even as it occurred to him that _this_ could have been one of those moments, if only he'd taken the time to whisk her off to Paris as he had always longed to do, if he only he had taken the time to whisper his love for her soft and sweet in her ear, if only he had _waited,_ but he been made impatient by dreams of a future brighter than his present, and pressed his suit too soon. And then they had fallen apart, and she had left him, and the days had dragged on, bleak and relentless.

"Why did you, Ruth?" he asked her then.

There were tears standing in the corners of her eyes, and her brow furrowed in confusion, so he hastened to explain himself.

"Refuse to marry me, I mean."

Oh, he knew the answer to that question already, had heard it from her own lips, but he needed to hear her say it now, now that she had spent so long without him, now that she had been granted the time, the space she once told him she so desperately needed. The moment he'd caught sight of her in his hotel room a strange wild hope had sprung to life in his chest, and he needed to her tell him now for certain that such hope was destined to be disappointed.

"You know why," she breathed, dropping her gaze from his face for the first time in what felt like hours, but had in truth only been a few minutes.

"Ruth-"

"I couldn't marry you, Harry. I couldn't."

"Why not?"

It was foolish, he knew, to press her so. Ruth did not respond well to prodding, at least not when it came to personal matters. Professionally, a bit of goading and a well placed challenge often drew the best results from her, but when it came to matters of the heart she had never appreciated being backed into a corner. But then, Harry had never been one to let things go, and he knew he might not ever be granted another opportunity to speak to her so plainly.

"Because," she said, shifting uneasily, swaying towards him and then back again, worrying the sleeves of the jumper she wore between her fingertips. "Because I…"

Ruth couldn't find the words, but then she did not need to, for Harry had words to spare.

"Because you were scared."

A sharp gasp escaped her, and she looked up at him then, wounded and terrified and ready to run, and he barrelled on, driving his ship into this storm with no thought for consequences.

"And I could understand that, Ruth. If only we could have talked about things, properly, if only you hadn't-"

"You are _unbelievable_ , Harry," she hissed, more furious than scared now that he had goaded her. "Do not try to blame me for-"

"For pulling away from me? For running away, again? For never giving us a chance-"

"I gave you a chance! I was _with_ you, Harry. I was trying so hard-"

"You shut me out," he argued back, feeling his blood begin to rise, his heart pounding, his hands itching to hold her, to sink into her hair and draw her close to him. Perhaps it was strange, the way arguing with her only made him love her more, but an argument now, an honest, open conversation was an improvement on their current standing, as far as he was concerned, given that the last time he'd tried to talk to her about their circumstances they'd both been too reticent, too wounded, to argue their respective cases as clearly as they might otherwise have done. He had fallen in love with her the first time in the midst of an argument, and he felt himself once again in danger of losing himself to her completely.

"Only because you were too proud-"

"Tell me you didn't love me," he cut her off, and it would seem he'd won that round as she fell suddenly quiet, staring up at him with horror in her eyes. "Look at me now, and tell me you didn't love me."

There was a strained, terrible sort of silence in the wake of his command, both of them breathing rather heavily, oblivious to everyone and everything around them. For a year he'd been without her, and for a year he'd been able to think of nothing else save this, finally facing her, facing what they were to one another, what they had done to one another, what they could be, if only they found their way back.

Ruth broke that silence, her shoulders sagging and the words spilling out of her in a voice that dripped with sorrow.

"Of course I loved you, Harry," she told him.

Something about the moment, the fire she'd ignited in his veins, the tempting beauty that was Paris made him bold, and he reached for her then, caught her hip in his hand and stepped up close to her.

"And now, Ruth?"

He was looking down at her, small and forlorn in his arms, the tension that swirled within her palpable at such close range.

 _Say it,_ he begged her silently. _Just say it._

"Of course I love you," she whispered. "I don't think I'll ever stop."

 _Thank God._

On instinct he moved, tangling his free hand in her hair and swallowing the sound of her gasp with his own lips. She hesitated, but only for an instant; just as he was about to draw back from her, certain that he had ruined everything between them, she caught his cheeks in her hands the way she had done that day on the docks, pulled him down towards her even as she rose up to meet him. And Harry just smiled, and drowned beneath the waves of his love for her.


	8. Chapter 8

With a gasp Ruth pulled back, breathless and reckless and terrified. He smelled the same, felt the same, tasted the same, overwhelmed her in exactly the same way he had done all those years before, when they were still mostly whole, entirely together, facing the world side-by-side. A piece of her soul ached for him, the warmth of his arms, the steady reassurance of his presence, the comfort she found while he held her, this man who loved her, this man she loved. But only a piece, for the rest of her was afraid, and angry, and confused, and lost, all at once. Harry had _lied_ to her, but he had done it to protect her. Harry had torn them asunder, but he had also rather bluntly pointed out that he was not the only one to blame for what had become of them. There was a kind man and a comfortable life waiting for her back at the hotel, but in front her there stood a shadow, a ghost who owned her heart, and had done for many a long year. She could not find her way through the mess, had no notion of how they could move forward from here, but one thing she knew for certain; she could not stand here kissing Harry, no matter how enticing that prospect might be, while she still had questions, while they both still had entanglements to unravel, together or apart.

"Ruth," he said softly, and the sound of her name falling from his lips sent a shiver down her spine. He saw it, the way her body trembled, and he reached for her at once, enveloping one of her small hands in both of his, his skin worn and warm and gentle against her own.

"You're cold," he said.

She wasn't, not really; there was a chill in the crisp spring air but she was wearing his heavy jumper and the thrum of her blood in her veins kept her warm enough.

"I'm fine," she answered him, and the soft look he gave her, not quite a smile and yet close enough for her to know that it was an expression born of his fondness for her, told her that he did not believe her for a moment.

"You would be warmer at the hotel," he pointed out, but something deep inside Ruth's heart recoiled at the very thought of going back there, where Harry's woman was waiting in the restaurant - if indeed she had not already ventured up to their room and found him missing, if she was not at that very moment going mad with worry over him.

"No," she said, somewhat more abruptly than she meant to. "I'm fine. But I'm sure Rebecca is looking for you. I'm surprised she hasn't rung your mobile yet."

They'd been gone a while, now, had spoken for a time in his room before they ventured off on foot, before they found their way to this bridge where they now lingered, another nameless pair of lovers on a Parisian boulevard. The ten minutes Harry had promised his lover had long since expired, and Ruth knew now they were on borrowed time.

"I left my mobile in the room," Harry answered, and though she cursed herself for it, Ruth nonetheless fell just that little bit more in love with him as he spoke those words. The great Sir Harry Pearce never left his mobile behind, never turned it off, was never beyond the reach of the realm he had served well and faithfully for more than thirty years now, but he had done this thing for her sake, so that they might speak to one another, properly, without interruption. Ruth recognized the gesture for what it was at once, and the very thought that he could still care for her so deeply after all this time sent a rush of heating flooding over her.

"Come with me," he said, and before she could protest he was moving, his fingers lacing with hers, drawing her along beside him. For all that she felt herself untethered, tossed about on a sea of uncertainty, it seemed that Harry had a plan, and she was grateful that at least one of them knew what they were doing.

"This doesn't change anything, Harry," she murmured as they walked, and his pace slowed when he realized their conversation was not yet finished. "You're still you. You still have the job to worry about. Rebecca is still waiting for you. And I'm…"

"You're what, Ruth?" he prompted her when the words failed her. Though he had matched the cadence of his steps to hers still he led them both along the pavement, undeterred as he sought to carry out his mission, whatever that might have been.

 _Yes, Ruth, what are you?_

She was so many things she could hardly give them names. She was afraid of falling back into old patterns, afraid that her declaration of love might have convinced Harry that she was prepared to return to the grim reality of her life back in London, to face the death and the chaos once again. She was angry, to learn that Harry had lied to her and her agony had been for naught, angry that he seemed so sure of himself when she felt so lost. She was comfortable with her life in Bradford, and there was a comfortable man dining alone somewhere in the city who thought that she belonged to him.

"I won't go back to Thames House, Harry," she said at last.

"Did I ask you to?"

She might have thought his question flippant, if she had not caught sight of his expression in the glow of a passing street lamp. His brow was furrowed, his lips set in that adorable little pout of his, the lines of his face speaking to a sort of confusion, and she realized her thoughts had raced ahead of the conversation as they so often did.

"I do love you, Harry, but that doesn't negate everything that's happened between us."

He hummed, and turned to the side, pulling Ruth toward a nondescript building off to their right. And all at once she realized where it was he had been leading them, what it was he intended.

"Oh, Harry, no," she sighed, stopping in her tracks right in front of the small hotel. It was not the one they'd booked for the weekend; by all appearances, it lacked the airs and graces of their accommodations, but she could see Harry's plan written all over his face.

"I'm tired, Ruth," he said. "It's cold, and it's dark, and I don't want to have this conversation on a street corner. Come inside. Let's find a place to sit down, at least."

She should have left. She knew she should have left, should have found the wherewithal to turn away from him and whatever it was he meant to ask of her, all the salacious possibilities inherent in their shacking up in a hotel room together, if only for an hour or two. The very prospect of walking through those doors, Ruth so obviously attired in Harry's jumper, neither of them carrying a bag, neither of them intending to stay the night, facing the knowing stare of the desk clerk turned her stomach, but this was _Harry._ Harry, asking for a few minutes of her time, wanting to talk to her, wanting to stay by her side, and though common sense dictated that she leave, she found herself nodding dumbly, following where he led. Which, she supposed, she had been doing for more than a decade now, following him as they danced this strange and uncertain dance, Ruth knowing none of the steps and yet trusting that Harry would not lead her astray.

* * *

 _Six years earlier…_

Ruth's hands were trembling, as she stood in the corridor facing Harry's door. The steady thump of the base was still coming from the suite where the Italian Trade Minister was entertaining his guests. It had only been perhaps half an hour since Harry had confronted her in that corridor, prowled towards her with hungry eyes and parted lips, when it had taken every ounce of self-restraint she possessed to stick to her principles and turn away from him, no matter how handsome he was, no matter how she longed to bury her face in the crook of his neck. She had found the strength, however, had slipped back into her own room and left him standing there alone, just as her conscience dictated.

So why, then, was she here now? Loitering about outside his door where the cameras might catch sight of her, seriously considering what might have been the single most reckless undertaking she had ever in her life attempted? Whatever they were it could not be; Ruth could not abide people whispering that she had only achieved her position through sleeping with her boss, could not bear to be the reason people snickered about Harry behind his back, could not stand the thought that anyone might look at her and know at once the secrets of her heart. No matter how electric they were together, that night he'd walked her to her door and she had invited him inside in an unsteady voice, that night he'd wrapped her in his arms and shaken the very foundation of her world. Harry was a man of the world, brave and strong, a man who'd had his fair share of lovers, who did not hesitate before taking another, even if his infatuation was not meant to last. Their work was more important, that's what she'd told herself; whatever Harry felt for her was surely a passing fancy, and she could not let him sacrifice his reputation for a good shag.

 _But what about what me?_

That was the truth of it, she supposed, the reason why she'd left her mobile in her room so that Malcolm and the other techies keeping watch over Havensworth would have no idea where she had gone. She was standing outside Harry's door in the early hours of the morning because no matter how she tried to convince herself that Harry could not possibly feel so very deeply for her she could not shake the sure and certain truth that _she_ loved _him._

Ruth's heart was a fragile thing, and she did not give it away lightly. There had been one man, a trader called Anthony - the _big swinging dick,_ she'd called him once, and she smiled sadly to think of Danny, even in this moment - whom she thought she loved, whom she had imagined herself spending her life with, but he had thrown her over for a prettier girl, and she had spent months trying to put herself back together. He was the only one, though, the only one who had tempted her, who had swayed her, truly, beyond a few lackluster nights. The only one, until Harry.

Harry who had swept her away, with his soft eyes and his gentle hands and his kind words. Harry who was so unlike anyone she'd ever known, dangerous and comforting all at once. From the moment they met she'd found herself eager for his approval, but over time her feelings had changed, deepened. She looked forward to every moment she got to spend with him, felt a thrill each time she lifted her head and found him looking at her with heat and want shining in every line of his face. The dinner they'd shared had sparked something wild and yearning within her, a yearning that was not sated after just one night in his arms. She cared for him, respected him, yes, but she _wanted_ him, too.

And Ruth was tired of not getting what she wanted.

Maybe it was madness, to seek him out in such an environment. Maybe it was foolish, to think that he had fallen half so hard for her as she had for him. Maybe the whispers would be her undoing, maybe tomorrow she would regret this with every fiber of her being, but it seemed to Ruth that what she would regret more was never trying at all.

Drawing in a deep breath, then, she lifted her hand, and knocked twice upon his door.


	9. Chapter 9

**A/N: Apologies for the delay, I have been quite ill and am still not entirely recovered. I'm finally back to writing and am determined to keep up with it, and I thank you for your patience.**

* * *

The moment the door closed behind them Harry made straight for the settee, settling himself upon it and running a weary hand over his face. Ruth needed space, and he knew he needed to give it to her, that having led her through the streets of Paris to this nondescript hotel room he had already pushed her almost to the limits of her resolve, and to stand too close, to reach for her hand, to brush the pad of his thumb against her full bottom lip, to gather her into his arms and kiss her as he so dearly longed to do would only send her running. So he sat, and took several deep breaths, and watched her out of the corner of his eye, wary, uncertain as to what she might do next.

 _Of course I love you,_ she'd told him, so matter-of-factly, her shoulders sagging beneath the weight of her declaration. It was the first time she'd ever told him outright of the truth of her feelings, and the timing of it couldn't possibly have been worse, but still to know, for a fact, that she loved him, even after all this time, filled him with a certain sense of hopefulness, a surge of wild, desperate joy.

 _I don't think I'll ever stop._

That was enough, for Harry, enough to make up his mind, to decide for him which path he ought to take. She loved him, and he loved her, and she didn't think she'd ever stop, and he knew for a fact he never would, and so it seemed to him that the best course of action would be for them both to throw aside their pride and their lovers and embrace one another with open arms and willing hearts. Convincing his beloved of this, however, would be a nearly impossible task. He knew this, knew her doubtful heart, knew the number of her fears and the depth of her grief, each point that had so far kept them apart from one another forming a familiar constellation to hang in the air just above their heads, sparkling star-bright and sharp as a guillotine. It was Ruth he wanted, Ruth he needed, Ruth he would gladly follow into hell - or Bradford, should that be her preference - but whether Harry and his love would be enough for her remained to be seen.

She paced by the door, his beautiful love, fingernail caught between her teeth and a worried expression on her face, swaddled in his much too big jumper, looking small and frightened and young and more lovely than he had ever seen her before.

 _Come here,_ he wanted to say. _Come and sit and let us unpick it, together._ Yet he bit his tongue, for he did not know what it was she wanted of him, and he was so frightened of losing her that he did not dare reach out his hand, lest at his touch she should vanish like smoke upon the wind.

"This doesn't change anything," she told him, her voice soft and agonized.

"That's the second time you've said that," he pointed out, trying to keep the irritation out of his voice, "and I have no idea what makes you think it's true."

She shot him a helpless, quivering lip sort of look.

"You're still you, Harry."

"Yes, and you love that about me."

His quip earned him a reproachful glance from his beloved, but Harry was growing rather tired of circling round and round this same old point, neither of them ever gaining a single inch of ground.

"What does that mean, Ruth? I'm still me? What does that matter to you?"

She picked at the hem of his jumper, stared at the worn carpet beneath her boots, closing in on herself while Harry watched from the settee, paralyzed with want of her and yet utterly confused by her, as ever.

"Your job-"

"Bugger my job," he interrupted her, and she looked up at him sharply, and the diamond bright radiance of her eyes lanced through him hot as fire. "I'll ring the Home Secretary and resign this instant, if you like. I am not my job, Ruth."

"I would never ask you to do that," she said softly. And of course she wouldn't, he knew she wouldn't, knew that Ruth, more than anyone else, understood exactly what he did and why he did it, why he had lingered so long in a world full of pain and loss and betrayal. He had done it so that other people might be safe, happy, well and whole, but he was nearly sixty years old, and he was beginning to suspect that the time had come for him to look to his own happiness for a change. The game of spies was a young man's sport, and Harry Pearce had grown weary of it.

"I know you wouldn't," he sighed. "But the job is not everything I am. And it will never, ever, be more important than you." He would have thought that the Albany fiasco was proof enough of that fact, the way he'd cast aside his own career and reputation for the sake of her life. She hadn't seemed very grateful for the gesture, then or now, but the thing was done, and Harry would not change it, not for anything. Perhaps his choice had angered her, had cost him any chance of sharing his life with her once more, but it was because of that choice that she was still alive to hate him, and he was grateful for it.

"What about the lies?"

He could hear in her voice the way her resolve was weakening, the foundations of her anger and her bitterness towards him slowly crumbling beneath the weight of their affection, their regard, their hunger for one another. The room was small and fairly bare; there was an en suite just behind Ruth's position near the door, and a low coffee table in front of the uncomfortable settee where Harry was perched, and against the far wall there stood a bed, big and grand, a swirling vortex of innuendo and possibility, should they choose to fall into it. He wanted that, wanted her, wanted a lifetime stretching out before him where Ruth rested her head upon his chest and they neither of them had a care in the world, wanted it so badly that he ached with it, but first this, this conversation so many years overdue, this confrontation of every obstacle that had until now kept them apart.

"Ask me, Ruth," he answered her at once. "Ask me anything, and I will tell you the truth. I won't keep secrets from you."

 _Not anymore,_ he added silently. _Not now that we know it serves no purpose._

There was no sense, after all, in keeping secrets from Ruth, his brilliant, beautiful Ruth; she would still be a target for his enemies, whether she knew his secrets or not, and telling her the truth of himself, his life, would be to lift a great burden from his shoulders. He wanted to share himself with her, wanted her to feel free to do the same, wanted to begin here, on this night, in this room, to build a new life for them, together.

She was staring at him, aghast and on the back foot now. Every objection she had raised he had so far met with a parry of his own, their feet slowing as this sparring match drew closer and closer to its resolution, though Harry was no more certain of who the winner might be. The way he saw it the only thing keeping them apart was Ruth, Ruth and her stubborn insistence that they must keep their distance, and as he watched her he fancied he could see her resistance crumbling.

"What would it take, Ruth?" he asked her gently. "What would make you stop running?"

* * *

 _Six years earlier…_

The sound of a knock upon the door startled Harry; there had been no warning, despite his having left Malcolm and the other techies strict orders to alert him should anyone draw near his door. Given the lateness of the hour and the thorough rejection Ruth had dealt him Harry could not fathom who this visitor might be, so on his way to the door he paused long enough to collect a small handgun from his belongings. A quick glance through the spyhole revealed his visitor at once, and all bemused he opened the door, forgetting about the fact that he was barefoot and barechested, forgetting that he still held the gun in his hand, forgetting everything about the operation and Malcolm and his mobile and _everything,_ except for _her._

"Ruth?"

He couldn't quite believe that she was real, somehow. It had been nearly an hour since last he'd seen her, since she had looked at him with eyes full of hopeless yearning and yet still somehow found the strength to turn her back on him, on them, on everything they could have been together. And yet still, here she stood, wringing her hands, still wearing that same soft, floating blouse, that blouse that opened against her collarbone in a way that made him want to lean in and press his lips against her skin. Here she stood, eyes huge and bright and impossibly blue, in the doorway of his hotel room very late at night when everyone else was sleeping.

"I don't know what I'm doing," she said, as if she hoped that somehow confessing such a thing might be sufficient to make sense of it. Harry had no answers for her, but the fact that she had come to him at all seemed to be a victory in itself, and he was not about to turn her away.

"Well, whatever it is, let's not do it in the corridor, yes?" Harry answered, turning slightly so that she could brush past him and into the room, away from the prying eyes of the cameras in the hall beyond his door. The latch made a satisfying sound as it caught, as he turned the lock, as he slowly shifted his weight and his eyes fell upon her, this beautiful, beguiling, infuriating, brilliant girl he wanted with every piece of his heart. The hour was late, and they were alone, and Harry placed the gun upon the sidetable, his hands itching to hold her.

She was staring up at him, lips parted, breathing shallow, beautiful and yet somehow lost in a way that made him want to protect her, shelter her, comfort her, more than anything else. Yes he wanted her, had prowled towards her with a hungry heart earlier in the evening, but something else was brewing here, something far more desperate, something momentous, something that felt somehow life-changing. It was Ruth who had told him they could never be, Ruth who had put her foot down and ended their would-be love affair before they'd ever even really begun, but it was Ruth who had come to him now, and that simple fact gave Harry cause to hope.

"I meant what I said, Harry," she breathed, but he doubted her resolve for her gaze was fixed firmly on the broad expanse of his bare chest. "I can't bear the gossip and I can't bear to be the reason your team loses respect for you."

"Have they?" he asked, taking a slow, careful step towards her.

"They were laughing…" her protest was half-hearted at best, and she did not withdraw from him, so he took another step.

"They aren't here now, Ruth," he answered. "And they don't matter."

He was close now, close enough to touch her, and so he did, caught her hip in his hand and drew her in towards him. She went with him, stepping up close, her hands rising up, palms pressing against the heat of his chest while he bowed his head, desperate to be close to her. Gently he rested his forehead against hers, his nose slotting into place against her cheek, his lips only millimeters from hers, her breath washing warm and sweet across his skin when she gasped.

"Tell me what you want, Ruth," he whispered, his voice low and full of want. Perhaps it was cruel, to push her so, to offer such temptation, but she was beautiful and he adored her and so far she had not given him one single reason to think they ought not be together. As far as Harry could see she belonged here, within the circle of his arms, and he was doing his very best to convince her of that simple truth.

He had made his request and now he waited, let his lips brush tantalizingly against the corner of her mouth while that labyrinthine brain of hers tried to muddle through the problem. Beneath her gentle hands his heart was racing, everything he wanted, everything he needed hanging in the balance while he waited for her decision, but then at last it seemed that she had reached the end of her tether, for she shifted closer to him, and tilted her head back. They were close, so close he could not focus on the shine of her eyes or the curve of her cheek, so close that when she murmured, _you, Harry, I want you,_ he felt it more than heard it. Those simple words were all that was needed to shatter what remained of their restraint and his lips claimed hers in a moment, searing hot and hungry, exulting in the realization that for once they were on the very same page.


	10. Chapter 10

_What would it take, Ruth? What would make you stop running?_

She stared at him, aghast and lost for words. Her hands were trembling, her heart pounding, her feet shifting uneasily beneath her. Torn between fight or flight she remained as ever more inclined to flight; too much had happened, much too quickly, and she was struggling beneath the weight of burdens grown too immense for her to carry. The question Harry had just lobbed at her was more hand grenade than peace offering, a question that had plagued her for most of her life. What would it take, to slow her down, to convince her to make a choice, to commit, one way or the other?

There was Paul to consider, out to dinner somewhere in the city, completely oblivious to the fact that his lover was at that very moment standing in a discreet hotel room with another man. He was a nice man, Paul, and he cared for her, had of late been slowly insinuating himself more firmly into her life, had made his feelings for her quite plain. It would wound him, should she throw him over for Harry, and they worked together, an added complication that could make her life most unpleasant. Surely he deserved better from her, surely she could not so callously disregard him, even if she knew in her heart that she did not care for him half so deeply as he cared for her.

There was the past to consider, as well. A past fraught with pain, when she and Harry had done unspeakable things with one another, for one another. She had thrown her whole life away, once, to keep him safe at his post, and he had in turn demolished his own career for the sake of her life. HEr sacrifice she had made in good faith, and he had thrown that sacrifice back in her face, had willfully stepped down from the position she had secured for him at so great a price. People had died, because of choices they had made, because Harry loved her, and she felt the weight of that guilt, that grief, each time she looked at him. Harry had made it clear that given the option he would gladly turn his back on Five and settle down somewhere with her, but the question she had asked him so many years before when he had first proposed to join his life to hers still niggled at the back of her mind. What would they talk about, without work to bind them? What sort of life could they make for themselves when they had only ever known one another in the context of chaos? How could they ever explain their relationship to casual acquaintances?

But then, of course, there came the most pressing question of all. _Did it matter?_

Did it matter, really, how badly Ruth would hurt Paul should she choose Harry instead? Did it matter what they might say to their hypothetical neighbors, what they might discuss over dinner, when the truth was that Harry loved her, and she loved him, and they had a chance now to make things right? Did it matter, really, about her job, her students, her carefully laid plans, when the one man who had so irreversibly changed the course of her life, the one who had brought her more joy than any other, the one she had longed for, for years now, was sitting in front of her with a soft expression on his face, offering her all of himself?

The memories came back to her, as she stood worrying the hem of his jumper between her fingertips. Memories of nights spent wrapped in Harry's embrace, the tenderness of his hands ghosting along the length of her spine. Memories of cups of tea and bowls of pasta, meals eaten at the kitchen table or curled together on the sofa, conversations that touched on political theater and religious extremism but on music and Harry's childhood and Ruth's favorite books, too. She had rested her head on his chest, just above his beating heart, traced her fingertips against his skin and whispered to him softly, taught him lines of Arabic poetry while he told her sad stories of the death of kings. She knew what it might look like, a life lived with Harry. What she did not know was how long such a dream could be expected to last, and she was terrified of the moment when she must inevitably wake, and find her dream in ruins.

"I asked you once," she said slowly, haltingly, "if you could picture it. Us, together, in a little house in Sussex."

Harry's expression grew rather pained, and Ruth's heart grieved to think how she had wounded him, how even now, years later, the memory of that conversation was still bitter and hard. It had been a terrible night, at the end of a terrible day, at the end of a terrible month, and the words had come spilling out of her so quickly, too quickly for her to stop them, destroying her relationship with Harry before she had a chance to explain herself properly. With those words she had dug a hole for herself, a cell in which her heart had languished ever since. What she was trying to do, in bringing it up now, was to finally free herself from the prison her own fears had built.

"Ruth-"

"I tried to picture it, Harry," she said. "I tried to imagine us retired, and happy, and... _normal._ Living a simple life. I went to Sussex. You remember, after...the explosion, they made us take compassionate leave?"

Sorrow had given way to bewilderment on Harry's face, but he nodded once in understanding, and Ruth drew in a very deep breath, and barreled on.

"I went to Sussex, to a little town on the coast, for the weekend. I stayed in a little house by the water, and I...I just sat, and looked at the sea, and for two days I wished you were there with me. I wished that you were there to hold me, to talk to me. I _wanted_ that, Harry. I wanted you and me, together, away from it all. But no matter how hard I tried to imagine it, I couldn't imagine that you would be happy there."

And that was what she'd meant to tell him, all those years before. That was the truth that had scared her most, sent her running. Ruth had lived a simple and elegant life, once, and she wanted it again so badly that she ached with it. Harry, though, he was a different sort altogether; he had devoted so much of himself to his work, had sacrificed so much, thrived on the chaos, the adrenaline, the life-or-death stakes of the world to which he had committed himself, and though she loved him dearly, though she had never in her life felt as safe as she did when he held her, Ruth had always suspected, somewhere deep in her heart, that Harry would never be happy away from Five. Thames House was his home, the people there his family, the work he did the only thing in his life that gave him purpose, and Ruth could not bear the thought of taking him away from that, of having him wake up one day to resent her and the quiet pastoral life to which she had relegated him. Sir Harry Pearce was made to march with purpose through the corridors of power, not to stroll along the shoreline with Ruth's hand in his own.

But a very strange thing happened as she spoke. She expected him to sigh, to protest most vehemently, to point out yet again how very wrong she was, but as she watched him, Harry only smiled. _Smiled,_ softly, warmly, with his whole face, as if she had just told him once more that she loved him, and not confessed that she feared she would never be enough for him. While Ruth stood caught in a maelstrom of indecision and sorrow Harry rose slowly to his feet and walked towards her, his hands held ever so slightly in front of him, as if she were a startled horse he needed to calm.

"You did ask me, Ruth," he said in a gentle tone of voice. "But you never let me answer."

And what could she do then but stare at him, open-mouthed and confused? The way she recalled that conversation he had never tried to correct her, but then she supposed he must have been right, for she had spoken her piece as if the answer to her question was already decided. Now, it would seem that Harry disagreed, and intended to set her straight. It was a prospect that terrified her.

"You asked if I could picture us in a little house in Sussex. You asked me what we would do, what would say when the neighbors came round. I've been thinking about this for three years, Ruth. Are you ready to hear the answer?"

A single tear escaped her, slid down her cheek while Harry drew nearer still, until at last he could reach out and take her hand in his own. Smiling that same tender smile he laced their fingers together, and began to speak.

"Of course I can picture it, Ruth. I know what it looks like, when I wake up in the morning and see your face. I've watched you make tea more times than I can count. And I want that. You want to know what we would do?"

He reached out with his free hand, brushed the tears from her cheek with the pad of his thumb. "We would walk by the water, and in the summer we would sit and watch the tourists. Do some people-watching without a backup team and a surveillance van. They have universities in Sussex, too, you know."

At that Ruth laughed, a bit wetly, and Harry just kept on smiling. "You could teach, if that's what you want to do. And I have a list of books I'd like to read, and, well...I have a confession to make."

He had been slowly smothering her fears beneath the weight of his soft, confident words, but as he said _I have a confession to make_ those fears came roaring back with a vengeance. No confession from Harry had ever, in Ruth's experience, been a good thing, but then he explained himself, and all her doubts were turned to quiet joy in a moment.

"I actually quite like gardening."

What a picture he painted, how easy he made it sound; for a moment she closed her eyes, pictured them in a little house, Harry puttering around the garden on a sunny afternoon while Ruth sat at a little table in the shade with a pile of papers in front of her. Subconsciously she swayed towards him, the longing of her heart slowly winning the battle against her natural circumspection.

"When the neighbors come round we'll talk about the weather, or their children, or the book I'm reading, or the play you dragged me to see. We can build a life, Ruth, the life you want. It's not too late."

" _Harry."_ His name left her lips on a quiet gasp, a desperate plea. When he said it, it sounded almost possible, this beautiful, simple life, this life she had dreamed of, this life she had for so long believed to be beyond her reach. Always before Ruth had worried that her own rather pedestrian desires for safety, for comfort, for a hand to hold would not be enough to keep his attention, but to know now that he longed for the same things, that he had imagined their life together and found it as appealing as did she, shattered the last remaining bulwarks of her restraint. All hesitation, all uncertainty left her in that moment, and Harry must have sensed it for he drew her into the circle of his arms, held her close, leaned in so that his forehead was resting against hers, tenderly, gently. He was waiting for her to come to him, the way he had done so many years before at Havensworth, had laid his heart at her feet and now fell silent while she warred with herself, while she drew ever closer to joining him there on the limb.

"I can picture it, Ruth," he whispered. "Can you?"

" _Yes_ ," she breathed, and with that word she turned her head, and captured his lips with her own. _Yes,_ she could picture it and _yes,_ she wanted him, and _yes,_ she loved him. None of the rest of it mattered. Not now. Not any more.


	11. Chapter 11

The moment his lips touched hers Harry's heart began to sing, a wild, exuberant hope rushing through him as he held her tight, as one of her hands snaked up to cup his cheek, holding him against her as her full lips parted and his tongue surged into her mouth. _Yes,_ she had whispered, and he had known in that moment that she was answering every question he had ever laid before her, was without reservation throwing her lot in with his. So many times over the years Harry had tried to talk her round, had been granted the smallest taste of what life might be like with Ruth by his side only to feel her slipping from his grasp, but for the very first time he felt in her ardent response to him an answering desire from her for the very same things. This was more than a kiss, more than a momentary lapse in judgment; he had told Ruth quite plainly what it was he wanted of her, the dreams he harbored for their future, and she had answered him, unequivocally, _yes._

There was no thought in his head save for her, the heat of her, the softness of her, the way she offered up every piece of herself to his hungry kiss. There were questions still to ask but they paled in significance compared to the one Ruth had just answered. Where they would go, what they would do, what they would say to those people in their lives who deserved an accounting from them; none of it mattered, really, for the most important thing was that now they would face those obstacles together. Whatever came next, they would be united in their response to it, and so he did not spare a moment to think of anything else. He only held her, broad hands pressed hard to the slope of her back, and kissed her with everything he had.

It had been so long, so very long, since last he'd held her in his arms. Before the tribunal, before Albany, before Ros's death and his subsequent disastrous proposal; it all felt rather like something that had happened in another life, now that once more Ruth was wrapped around him. And it seemed that much as he felt himself overwhelmed, swept away on a tide of desire and desperate need, Ruth was likewise powerless to resist the call of her own heart, for her hand slipped round to cradle the back of his head, fingertips threading through his sparse hair, the yearning in her touch communicating itself so eloquently to him.

There was nothing for it, then, but to take a shuffling step forward, and then another, and then another, Ruth following the dance he had begun without hesitation until they were both of them collapsing onto the bed. Their lips parted, but only for a moment as they rolled together, as Ruth hooked her leg over his hip and drew him close, reaching out to touch his face once more, her expression awe struck, reverent, delighted.

"I have missed you," she whispered as her fingertips traced the lines of his face. "So much."

"My Ruth," he answered, pulling her closer so that he could feather kisses along the line of her jaw, the wrinkles at the corners of her eyes, the creases at the side of her mouth. "I have ached for you."

And he _had_ , had every moment of their separation felt the loss of her manifesting as a physical pain in his chest, had spent two years walking the streets of his beloved London as no more than a shell of his former self, one half of a whole that had seemed until that moment to be shattered beyond all hope of repair. Not so any more, however, for Ruth was holding him, cradling him close and whispering words of love and devotion in his ear. Perhaps it was rash, to fold themselves together amongst the tangled sheets of that anonymous room when they had not yet made any plans for their next steps, had not even begun to discuss the course they ought to take, but it felt so right that Harry could not stop to question the wisdom of his decision. His hands slipped beneath the heavy fabric of her jumper - his jumper, in truth, though he would gladly gift it to her if only so he could see her wearing it all the time- intent on finding the heat of her skin. And find it he did, her back soft and smooth as silk beneath his palms, and she gasped and he groaned and once more they found themselves locked in a heated kiss.

* * *

 _Six years earlier…_

 _You, Harry. I want you._

Those words echoed loud as gunfire in his mind, as he lost all restraint and kissed her with everything he had, felt her molding herself against him everywhere they touched, their hearts beating in time to a rhythm of desperate yearning. His lips were tracing the elegant lines of her neck, one hand clasped hard to the swell of her bum, holding her tight against him while she sighed and wound her fingers through his hair. He had made no attempt to hide his desire for her and she had made no attempt to pull herself back from him, and he knew that in that moment she would follow wherever he led, would give him anything he asked of her. There was nothing in the world he wanted so much as to press her back against the wall and lose himself between her thighs but before he could he knew there was one question he had to ask.

"Your mobile," he gasped against her skin.

"Left it in my room," came her breathless answer.

He grinned and resumed his kisses, needing no further explanation. She had come to him in the still of the night without her mobile, with the express purpose of seeing him without anyone the wiser. Perhaps she had come knowing this would be the inevitable result; perhaps this was what she wanted all along. It was enough for Harry to know that she had done this thing, and while as her boss he knew he ought to chide her for this breach in protocol as her lover he gave thanks for it. They had time, then, time enough to enjoy one another, and though they would be exhausted come the morning it was his hope that they would be rejuvenated as well, that they would be all the better for having healed their wounded hearts.

Though a baser part of him rejoiced at her words and urged him to press her back against the wall some sense of chivalry prevailed, and so he did not lead her there but instead to the big empty bed behind them, and Ruth went with him willingly, the warmth of her hands against his cheeks, the back of his neck, dancing along the breadth of his bare shoulders telling him in no uncertain terms that she was as invested in this as was he. There was no grace in it, the way they tumbled into that bed, but there was grace in the way she held him, the way he felt when she cast one leg over his hip and drew him in close against her. Every line of her face, every fleck of color in her glorious eyes, every detail of her was so clear, so brilliantly, beautifully on display for him that for a moment he could only look at her, utterly swept away by how lovely she was.

"You are so beautiful," he told her, his words a reverent whisper even as his hands slipped beneath her soft, floating blouse, intent on the warmth of her skin. At his touch she arched further into his embrace, tightened the grip of her thigh around him.

"I'm sorry," was her answer, and some of the confusion he felt must have shown on his face for she leaned forward and kissed him once, softly.

"I'm sorry for doubting this. Us," she explained. "I'm sorry for running."

He hummed and pressed himself closer to her, guided her to tilt her head back so that his lips could once more explore the column of her neck.

"Just promise me you won't run away from me again," he all but begged her.

"I promise," came her breathless answer.

* * *

Between them they managed, somehow, to strip the clothes from their backs, each article falling in wild disarray around the bed, utterly forgotten the moment it was dispatched in favor of exploring the skin revealed in its absence. It all came back to him, as if by muscle memory alone; without a thought he sought out each place he recalled so fondly, knowing without need of words where to touch her, where to kiss her, how to hold her and leaving her gasping in delight. The tender skin behind her ear, the thundering pulse at the base of her neck, the unbearable softness of the curve of her breast; with each passing second he discovered her anew, sought to bring forth the soft sounds of her pleasure even as her own hands danced across his skin, pressed him closer to her, lit him up with longing for her.

But then, oh then his fingertips dipped between her legs and she gasped, the leg cast over his hip curling, drawing him in even as she turned her head, let her gasping breaths paint the curve of his shoulder where she nestled now. They surrounded one another completely, twisted and tied together with bonds no man could break. The sound of her voice, her gasping moans and awestruck whimpers led him on until the clamoring of his own body grew too loud to be ignored. Perhaps the rhythm of his fingertips against her center faltered, or perhaps she possessed some inexplicable, otherworldly understanding of him, but even as his own arousal began to peak she reached down between them and wrapped one hand gently around his hardness.

He was unable to contain his groan of longing, and though she kept her face tucked into the crook of his shoulder where he could not see her still he could feel her smile where her lips brushed against his skin.

"Please, Harry," she whispered.

He could never deny her anything, this beautiful woman he loved more than his own life, and so they worked together there, Ruth's hand guiding him in until at last he felt himself plunging into her wet heat, felt the shiver that coursed through her own body, felt the slightest rasp of her teeth against his skin.

"I love you," she whispered, and in that moment he was lost, for finally he knew those words to be true. She loved him, and he loved her, and they allowed themselves to be consumed by that love, rocking together as two ships tossed about on a stormy sea, the lilting sound of her cries as intoxicating as the wash of waves upon the shore. Higher and higher they built one another up, her hips pressing into his in a rhythm that left him breathless. They remained right where they were, twined together on their sides, so close, every sensation reduced to the immediate, to heat and wet and the slide of skin on skin and the softness of her hair beneath his hand as he cradled her there against him. A high-pitched, needy sort of whine left her, and then she gasped as at last the relentless plunge of his cock inside her and the unbearable intimacy of the moment swept her away. There was nothing he could do in response but carry on, thrust into the delirious spasms of her release until he found his own, nestled in her embrace.


	12. Chapter 12

"What do we do now, Harry?" she asked him softly.

It was a question she desperately wished she did not have to ask; Ruth would have given anything, in that moment, to remain right where she was, nestled in Harry's embrace, to spend the night wrapped in his arms and wake in the morning to the sight of his face. She would have given anything to leave that room in the morning and set off with him, alone, to see the world, to turn their backs on Bradford and London both and create new lives for themselves, so far removed from the old ones. Ruth had left her name behind twice now, had taken on the mantle of another woman's life, and she would gladly do so again, so long as she had Harry's hand to hold.

For all that she wanted it, however, she knew such freedom was not in the cards for them. Despite the promises he'd made her, Ruth knew that Harry could never simply walk away from Thames House. He would need time, time to find a suitable replacement for himself, to tie up his loose ends, to make nice with the politicians and ensure that wherever they went next the job would not follow him. And much as she longed to shed her skin and start afresh Ruth knew that when the sun rose she would find her own responsibilities too pressing for her to simply walk away from them; she did not know what would become of her students should their professor simply vanish, and she felt she owed it to them to at least see out the term.

 _That wouldn't be so bad,_ she thought as she rested with her head pillowed on Harry's chest, his hands smoothing up and down the bare skin of her back; they could wait until the end of term. That would be long enough for both of them to get their affairs in order, to make plans for where they would go, what they would do, when at last the time was right for them.

But as ever her mind was running away with her; she had asked a question, and after a moment's silence, Harry chose to answer it.

"Much as I might like to," he said slowly, "I don't think we can stay here."

Ruth hummed, but closed her eyes against the sting of those words. She knew it was true, that Paul and Rebecca would be furious enough as it was; to linger overlong would be to invite worry, perhaps even fear, and given Rebecca's connections in the Home Office the last thing Ruth and Harry needed was to become the subject of a manhunt.

"We need to tell them, Ruth, and then in the morning we need to go home. But after that…"

 _After that,_ Ruth told herself, _we can have the life we always dreamed of._

The prospect of the next few hours was unpleasant, to say the least. It would not be so very difficult to fob Paul off, to tell him that she had gone for a walk to clear her head and then change her travel details the moment the sun rose. She could be back in Bradford the following evening, could neatly cut him from her life, but having finally told the truth to herself and to Harry she could not find it in her heart to lie again. It would hurt, but she owed him the truth. He was a good man, Paul; it wasn't his fault that he wasn't the right one.

"I don't want to face him," she breathed into the quiet. "I don't want to spend another night apart from you." In truth it turned her stomach to even consider spending the night with Paul lying beside her.

She felt rather small, rather pathetic as she spoke those words, but she could not deny the truth of them. The joy, the relief, the hope that Harry brought to her, the comfort she found in his arms; it was a pleasure Ruth had denied herself too long. There was such beauty in this, in lying still and safe with a man she adored, a man who knew her heart, her history better than any other, and for so long Ruth's life had been devoid of such splendor. Bradford had been dreary and dark to her mind, her last few months in London doubly so, and Harry's love had burst forth like a glorious sunrise over a calm sea, blinding and brilliant. She did not want to consign herself to the darkness once again, not even for one night.

"I don't want you to," Harry answered her. "The thought of-" he caught himself before he said it, before he breathed life into his own jealousy, but Ruth knew him so well, and she did not need to hear the words to know what he meant. She felt much the same; the thought of another woman lying in bed beside Harry, presuming to claim that which belonged to Ruth so unreservedly, was more than distasteful; it felt almost blasphemous. Though Ruth did not know her, though she knew such thoughts were unkind, she could not help but feel a bit of contempt for Rebecca, Rebecca who did not seem to understand or condone Harry's dedication to his chosen profession, who wanted him to be someone he was not, who thought, even for a moment, that he was meant to share her bed. Oh, Harry had sworn to leave his post for Ruth's sake, but he had done so of his own volition, for she would never have dreamed of making such a request. During the tempestuous months of their earlier affair he had been dragged out of bed more times than Ruth could count by the ringing of his mobile, and she had never once complained, for she understood what it meant, to sit in his chair. She understood the sacrifices he had made, and though she did not know Rebecca personally the one interaction she had overheard had been sufficient for Ruth to draw a somewhat unfavorable conclusion about the woman's disposition.

"We have this room for the night," she said slowly, hardly daring to believe her boldness in suggesting such a thing and yet speaking the words anyway, because she had to, because she wanted to, because she could not bear to be parted from him. "Perhaps we could…"

Her voice trailed off but Harry picked up the thread at once, and though she could not see him Ruth fancied she could hear the smile in his voice as he spoke.

"We could gather our things and come back here, together?" he concluded.

"What do you think?"

As she waited for his answer Ruth's fingertips danced over the plane of his chest, drifting through the wispy whorls of hair she found there, thinking only how she loved this man, how she could not believe she had spent the last two years without him, how wonderful it was to think that soon she would never be without him again.

Gently Harry leaned down and kissed the top of her head.

"I think that's a fine idea," he said.

* * *

They took their time about it, jostling at the sink and taking turns for the loo, smiling softly, shyly at one another as they slipped back into their clothes. The keycard sat heavy in Harry's pocket as they walked from the hotel hand-in-hand; they had agreed to speak to their respective partners, gather their things, and meet in the hotel bar before making the trek back to the place that had become their haven, that un-looked-for sanctuary that had helped them to knit their hearts back together. As they walked along the pavement they were both rather quiet, thinking about what came next. Harry was grateful for the silence, for the beautiful sights of the city around them, for Ruth's tender understanding. She was so unlike Rebecca, who filled every moment with idle chatter; he had said once that Ruth understood the need for quiet, and she showed that intuition as they walked along now. Her hand was small and soft and warm, wrapped inside his own, and that gentle touch reassured him more than any words could ever hope to do.

Ever the spook Harry was gathering his own thoughts, trying to form a plan of attack. He wanted the ending of his relationship with Rebecca to be brief, had watched as Ruth entered his mobile number into her own phone and promised her it would take him no more than an hour to settle the matter and pack his bag. Even an hour seemed to him to be a rather generous allotment of time, but he would rather surprise Ruth by being early than worry her by being late.

But what to say? How to explain all this to Rebecca, a woman who while overly fond of the sound of her own voice was not without her own good qualities to recommend her, who had at times been good company, who had shared his bed for months? How to explain any of this to a woman who did not even know of Ruth's existence, who could not even begin to comprehend what he and Ruth had been through together, what they meant to one another?

It was tempting to simply lie to her, to tell her that work had called him away, but somehow he didn't think Ruth would approve of such duplicity, and as ever Ruth's good opinion of him mattered more than his own desire to expedite what was likely to be a rather painful, and perhaps even somewhat dramatic conversation. He would need to handle the situation with care, and he remained determined to keep Ruth's name out of it. It wouldn't do, to have Rebecca casting blame or aspersions upon Ruth, who was to his mind above reproach. His Ruth was the best of women and he would hear no ill words about her, would not dare do anything that might tarnish her reputation, even in the mind of someone as relatively inconsequential as Rebecca.

All too soon their steps led them back to their original hotel. They passed through the lobby and by the entrance to the restaurant, Ruth's hand tightening her grip on him ever so slightly, but mercifully there was no sign of either Rebecca or Ruth's man, and they entered the lift without any complications. The moment the shiny silver doors closed Ruth leaned against him, turned her face into his shoulder and sighed.

"This is going to be dreadful," she told him in a quiet voice.

Harry turned and wrapped his arms around her without a thought for the circumstances; they were alone in the lift and Ruth loved him, and he wanted more than anything to soothe her worried heart.

"It will be all right," he promised her. "It won't be pleasant, but at the end of it, we'll be together. And that's all that matters now."

Ruth leaned back against his arms, tilted her head so that she could gaze up at his face.

"I'm so tired," she told him, and in those words he understood the full scope of her meaning, that she was not simply in need of sleep but tired of the running, the lies, tired of their separation, tired of the grief, just as he was. "All I want is you."

There was nothing else for it in that moment but to kiss her, and so he did, bowed his head and brushed his lips against her own, wanting to offer her every reassurance, hoping that she could feel in the heat of his kiss the depth of his regard for her, his need for her, the joy that filled him at the thought of a future with her. It was all he had ever wanted, a lifetime of Ruth, and he could hardly believe his luck, that such a thing might finally come to pass.

She had told him once, however, that timing was everything, and it would seem he had not learned that lesson for he had no sooner sunk into her kiss than the lift doors opened on their floor. In that moment he was far too distracted by the warmth, the glory of Ruth to notice something as mundane as the silent sliding of the doors, and was only brought back to his senses by the sudden sound of a sharp voice from the corridor.

"Rachel?" Paul asked incredulously.

"Oh, _shit,"_ Ruth swore, pulling out of the kiss at once, though her hand remained fisted in the material of Harry's shirt, clinging to him for dear life as they came face to face with their baffled lovers.

"Bugger," Harry agreed morosely.


	13. Chapter 13

_Same evening, five minutes earlier…_

Rebecca stared around the room, Harry's mobile clutched in her hand, her heart thundering in her chest. He had promised her that he would only be a few minutes, and so she had gone down to the restaurant and ordered a glass of wine for herself. Over the last few months Rebecca had learned a few things about the great Harry Pearce and she knew that if he had business to attend to it would take him more than the ten minutes he had requested. So when ten minutes turned into fifteen she did not fret, and at the twenty minute mark she flagged down a waiter and ordered her meal. If Harry wanted to skip dinner that was his prerogative; she would not chase him down like some nagging harpy of a wife. It would hardly be the first time she'd eaten dinner alone, and so she had entertained herself with fine food and good wine and scrolling through news reports on her mobile. She might have been spending a dirty weekend in Paris but she could not allow herself to be completely out of touch with the goings on back home; Harry wasn't the only one who had an important job in London.

When one glass of wine became three and one hour slowly slipped into two, that was when she began to worry. Harry hadn't answered any of her texts and had not shown his face in the restaurant, and as the seconds ticked by it became more and more apparent that something was afoot. This trip had been of Harry's making, and though he had assured Rebecca several times over that it was just a little holiday she knew that he was a spook, knew that lying came as naturally to him as breathing. What if, she asked herself, he had undertaken some sort of assignation in the city, and was even now in danger? She had run her fingertip around the rim of her empty wine glass and warred privately with herself; was it worth ringing the HS, to find out what Harry's true purpose in Paris was, to find out if he was in trouble, to swoop in and save him?

 _Patience,_ she'd told herself. It could be that Harry had fallen asleep in the room; he'd seemed out of sorts since their arrival, though Rebecca had blamed that on his enforced sabbatical rather than any complex emotional distress. He loved his work, did Harry. Thus determined she had slipped upstairs to check on him, unlocked the door to their room and stepped inside to find him gone, his mobile lying discarded in the middle of the bed.

That was when the panic had begun to set in. Harry Pearce never, _ever_ went anywhere without his mobile. In the dead of night, in the middle of the opera, wherever he was the mobile was with him, and whenever it rang he answered it. She scooped it up, feeling herself begin to tremble. Whatever plans he might have made for this trip he had not confided in her, and she did not know what to do, what course to take. Did he have backup, a contingency plan in place should things go badly for him? And why the bloody hell hadn't he trusted her?

In the beginning she had been content with the enigma of him, drawn to his mystery and to the knowledge that he would never make demands of her. A casual sort of arrangement seemed to suit him, and when they first began to spend time together it had suited her, as well. Rebecca wasn't interested in another man who wanted to tell her what to do, where to go, who to see, who expected her to drop everything and tend to his every need without question. Harry certainly didn't seem to need that sort of devotion from her, but as the weeks turned into months she found herself fascinated by him. How could one man so isolate himself from everyone else around him, and what on earth was he hiding? Oh, of course he couldn't discuss his work, and she didn't expect him to, but he kept so many more secrets. She knew nothing of his life before they'd met, nothing of his family, his history, his former lovers. There had been whispers, of course, that he had been suspended for something that involved a woman and perhaps a spot of light treason, but Rebecca had been working in the embassy in Paris at the time and so remained utterly in the dark as regarded the details. If there was a woman, Harry did not speak of her.

His sudden disappearance, this suspicion it engendered, this potential for disaster, this sort of _thing_ was not Rebecca's forte; politics and niceties, that was her niche, and though she had participated in her fair share of obfuscation this sort of high-stakes spying was so far outside her realm of experience that she hardly knew what to do with herself.

 _What would Harry do?_ She asked herself as she paced back and forth with the mobile clutched in her hand. It was a surprisingly difficult question to answer. She knew how Harry took his tea and that when the Ashes were on he could not spare a moment's consideration for anyone or anything else. She knew that his skin was littered with scars he would never explain, that sometimes the mobile rang in the middle of the night and he left her bed and never looked back. She knew that there was a sadness in him that could not be defined. She knew that he was a powerful man, that he was kind, that he enjoyed going out to the opera with a beautiful woman on his arm. She knew there was a part of him she would never reach. As for what motivated him, the inner workings of his mind, his heart, she remained utterly in the dark.

 _Don't panic,_ she told herself. He had taken his shoes and his wallet and his room key, wherever he had gone, even if he had left his mobile behind. The room did not appear to have been ransacked, and there was no sign that he had left against his will. _The desk clerk,_ she told herself. Yes, she could go down and see the desk clerk and ask him if he had seen Harry leaving, if he could recall when. It wasn't much, but she felt such an urgent need to do something, _anything_ rather than simply sit and wait and pine for him in that room alone.

Thus resolved she stepped from the room and into the corridor, and at almost exactly the same moment a man stepped out of the room next door. They made eye contact, very briefly; he was a handsome sort of man, with his salt and pepper hair, his square jaw, his kind eyes. There was a slightly awkward moment, as they both reached to press the button for the lift at the same time, but the man was distracted by his mobile and stepped back at once without sparing a thought for Rebecca.

"Rachel," he said suddenly, urgently into the phone. "Where the hell are you? I came back and you're not here and I'm terribly worried, darling. Please, ring me. As soon as you can."

And wasn't that strange, Rebecca thought, that this man should also have returned to his room to find his companion missing. That an Englishman, staying in the room right next to theirs, should find himself in the same circumstances as Rebecca. There were a hundred reasons a woman might step alone from her hotel room out into the crisp air of a beautiful Parisian night, but given that the room was right next to Rebecca's, right next to the bed where an English spy had been sleeping, was sufficient to raise her suspicions. She wanted to speak to him, to ask him about this missing Rachel, but she did not have the words. The moment was uncomfortable enough as it was, and she could think of no way to raise the subject without sounding as if she had gone quite mad.

Finally, the lift arrived. The little light blinked on, and the doors slid slowly open, and Rebecca started to take a step forward, but then she realized that the lift was occupied, and anger replaced the fear that had bound her in a moment.

For inside the lift there stood Harry, still dressed in the same clothes he'd been wearing when she left him though he was considerably more mussed and wrinkled now. There stood Harry with his arms around a small, dark-haired woman, kissing her for all he was worth.

The lying about work Rebecca could understand. The unwillingness to share his heart, to be vulnerable, that too she could allow. But this? This humiliation, this betrayal, this shock? This was, quite simply, inexcusable. Her hands were shaking, still, but for an entirely different reason. She felt the rush of heat in her cheeks, felt the shrieking of her heart, felt a sudden, wild urge to step right up to him and strike his face.

"Rachel?" the man next to her asked incredulously, and Rebecca felt the smallest surge of vindication. Her suspicions had been correct, then; Harry and this woman had gone missing together, for what purpose she could not say. Business or pleasure, she would find out soon enough, would have her answers of Harry no matter how he tried to fight against her.

They parted with a gasp, Harry and this mysterious Rachel, though she kept one hand fisted in his shirt, clinging to him.

"Oh, _shit,"_ she swore, this woman who dare presume to put her hands on Rebecca's lover. For a moment Rebecca simply stared at her, studying her face. Rachel was a small woman, almost a head shorter than Harry and delicately built, with high, sharp cheekbones and heavy lines at the corners of her mouth. She had the most brilliantly, shockingly blue eyes, and her hair was shiny and soft. And, to Rebecca's utter mortification, she appeared to be wearing Harry's favorite cream jumper. Though Rachel seemed lovely she was hardly so beautiful as to compel a complete stranger to throw over his lover for her, and Harry was hardly the sort to compromise himself for a pretty face.

 _They know each other,_ Rebecca realized. It was all there, the way they held onto one another, the mark of Harry's lips against this stranger's neck, the fact that she was wearing his jumper, the fact that neither of them made a move to leave the lift but simply stood, unwilling to be parted.

Harry caught Rebecca's eye and the tips of his ears went pink, the way they did when he was embarrassed.

"Bugger," he said softly.

"What the bloody hell is this?" the man standing beside Rebecca - Rachel's man, apparently - demanded. There was a red tinge to his cheeks and a fury in his eyes, a fury Rebecca felt echoed in her own heart. _How dare they?_ She thought, staring a hole straight through Harry all the while. How dare they embarrass her like this? How dare they lie to both their partners like this? Had they planned this from the beginning, a secret rendezvous in Paris? If they had Rebecca's estimation of Harry's skills as a spy would be greatly reduced, for everything about this was clumsy and poorly orchestrated.

"Paul, please," Rachel said in a soft voice. She made to step out of the lift, pulling away from Harry though his hand fell to the small of her back, unwilling to be completely parted. The man - Paul - reached out as if to grab hold of her, but Rachel recoiled from him, and Harry shot him a dark, territorial sort of look.

"I believe he asked you a question," Rebecca said coolly, still staring at Harry, this man she had just begun to feel a genuine affection for, this man who had so stirred her curiosity, her desire, this man she had welcomed into her life, who had now so completely shattered her pride and her plans for the future. "And I for one would like to hear the answer."

"Let's not do this in the corridor," Harry said gruffly, and Rebecca felt her anger only growing as he kept his hand pressed to Rachel's back, as if he could not bear to pull himself away from her.

"A fine idea," Paul spat. "Come on, Rachel." He held out his hand, all but vibrating with impatience and anger.

Clearly he thought that they would disappear into their separate rooms, but Rachel shifted back, pressing herself against Harry, her eyes wide with fear, and shook her head. It would seem she was not about to go anywhere alone with her lover, and given his obviously volatile emotional state, Rebecca could hardly blame her.

"Why don't we all step into my room," Harry said, and without waiting for an answer he and Rachel turned together and stepped away. Paul followed them - though he was fuming - and Rebecca took up the rear, her thoughts whirling. Curiosity, rage, shame, sorrow; she felt it all, in that moment. She watched the way this Rachel walked, the way Harry was with her, protective and deferential somehow, and she wondered what sort of woman could have so ensnared him, could have inspired such obvious affection, such regard in him. They were comfortable with one another, it would seem, but what Rebecca could not understand was _why._

 _I will have my answers,_ she told herself grimly as she closed the door behind her. _And then I never want to see him again._


	14. Chapter 14

Paul was absolutely fuming as he followed Rachel and her man into the suite right next to his own. Humiliation had turned to rage as he stood gawping at her, this woman he had come to adore, this woman he had until now believed to be _his,_ and his alone. That she had declined to join him for dinner was not in itself so very strange; she needed time to herself, and always had done, and he did not begrudge her a soak in the bath with a nice book while he wandered the streets of this city he loved so well. Paul had enjoyed a fine meal and purchased a treat for his beloved before making his way back to the hotel, knowing that the time she'd spent alone would have left Rachel refreshed and more receptive to any amorous advances he might choose to make. With thoughts of wrapping her in his arms and pressing her back against the silk sheets of their bed swirling through his mind he had walked with a light and untroubled step, but then he had opened the door to their suite and found it quite unoccupied. Her mobile and room key were missing, and she had not left so much as a note to tell him where he had gone.

That was perhaps the most frustrating thing about Rachel, the way she did whatever she pleased without a thought for him. She knew everything about him, the place where he had spent his childhood, the names of his university friends, his politics and his telly preferences. She knew his favorite wine and his favorite opera, as he had quite willingly shared every piece of himself with her. Rachel, though, had not been nearly as forthcoming. She remained a mystery, and he took great delight in solving it, solving _her,_ unraveling the enigma of this woman who shared his bed. At first glance she was not the most exciting of women; she was lovely but not heart-stoppingly beautiful, reticent and quiet, passionate about the literature she shared with her students and very little else. No one seemed to look twice at her, but she had captured his attention most completely. In the beginning, he had been rather charmed by her, in truth, had entertained himself wondering what on earth she had to hide.

Now such thoughts did not amuse him. He was tired of ferreting out her secrets one at a time; he wanted answers, and he wanted them now. Studying the pair of them together, the way Rachel kept so close to her man, the way he seemed so protective of her, offered some less than reassuring insights; knowing how difficult it had been for him to woo her, knowing how hesitant she was to engage in any sort of physical contact in public told him plainly that this man he'd caught her snogging in the elevator was no stranger. Rachel would never have allowed such familiarity from someone she did not already know intimately. Who was he to her, this portly, balding man, this man whose heavily lined face bespoke his age, proclaimed him far too old and far too tired for a woman as lovely as Rachel? This man whose jumper she wore, Paul realized as they all made their way into the room next door.

It could hardly be coincidence, he thought grimly, that he and Rachel were staying in the room next door to her paramour. Had she arranged this entirely, he wondered, arranged to sneak off for a rendezvous with a man who looked more like her father than her lover, deliberately spurning Paul and heaping her affections on this unlikely bastard instead? The man had a lover of his own, it would seem, an elegant lady who was of an age with him, who appeared to be a much more appropriate match for him than Rachel. He felt a bit bad for this woman, another victim in this bizarre pantomime, but his anger did leave much room for pity in his heart.

That she had lied, that she had manipulated him for her own ends, that she had humiliated him in front of other people, that she had for so long withheld her affections from him and now gave them to a stranger without a second thought; the whole situation was completely unbearable, and Paul felt himself teetering right on the brink of losing his tenuous self-control, all the vitriol he longed to let loose choking him with every breath. The room they'd ventured into was identical to the one Paul had only recently vacated; the table, the chairs, the balcony, the neatly made bed. They were tidy people, Rachel's lover and his companion, unlike Rachel who had strewn her possessions from one end of their room to the other, despite the fact that they had hardly been in Paris for any time at all. He spared the briefest of moments to investigate their surroundings and then returned to the matter at hand with a single-minded focus.

"What the bloody hell is going on here, Rachel?" he asked. He took a step towards her, but she shrank back from him, wrapping her arms around her waist and hanging her head while her man stood just behind her with a dark look upon his face and the other woman paced by the other side of the bed, all but vibrating with distress.

"It isn't what it looks like," Rachel muttered, staring at her shoes.

Paul barked out an incredulous laugh; he'd caught them snogging in the elevator, and she was wearing the man's jumper, the purpling mark on the side of her neck and the disarray of her hair giving evidence of their salacious activities during the brief time she'd been gone from his side. The sight of that mark, the realization of just what it meant - that they hadn't only been snogging, that while he had been obviously enjoying dinner alone she had been tangled up somewhere with this man, that she had allowed him to mark her when she had insisted that Paul not be allowed the same liberty - left him reeling, feeling as if all at once every assumption he had made about this woman had been proven entirely wrong.

"As eager as I am to hear your explanation," the other woman said coolly, "first I'd quite like to know how you and Harry came to be...acquainted with one another."

It was a question Paul was likewise interested to hear the answer to, and he watched the pair of them expectantly.

"Rebecca-" this Harry began to protest, but Rachel stopped him, reached out to place her hand upon his arm in a placating sort of way, and they shared a look then, as if with a single glance they could communicate their thoughts to one another. Harry's shoulders slumped and Rachel drew herself up, standing tall as she prepared to speak, looking squarely at Rebecca and refusing to share a moment for Paul.

"You work for the Home Office, don't you, Rebecca?" Rachel asked.

Paul was fighting the urge to stomp his foot in frustration; he couldn't see what one thing had to do with the other, and he was so lost in his own grief, his own anger that he could not spare a moment to wonder how strange it was, that he had gotten mixed up with some government flunkie and her red-faced lover, that he did not even consider how it was that Rachel had come to possess such information.

"My name is Ruth Evershed," Rachel continued.

The effect of that declaration upon Rebecca was immediate and extreme. Her face paled and she recoiled as if she'd been struck, her eyes suddenly a little wild around the edges as her gaze bounced from Harry to Rachel and back again. It made no sense to Paul, who was reeling for altogether different reasons; why had she given a false name? Or was _Ruth_ her true name, and Rachel no more than a fiction? And if she were this Ruth, why had she lied to him? He felt a bit sick, and in truth wanted nothing more than to collapse into the nearest chair, but so long as Rachel and her man remained standing he was determined to remain on his feet as well.

"You're joking," Rebecca said, her voice somewhat hoarse. "Have you been in contact with her all this time, Harry? The HS will have your head on a pike-"

"I had no idea she was going to be here, Rebecca," Harry answered wearily, rubbing at his eyes for a moment.

"Does someone want to explain this to me?" Paul asked acidly. He hated being kept in the dark almost as much as he hated sounding like a petulant child, and while it seemed that Rebecca had enough information to answer her questions they had not even scratched the surface of his own inquiries. What did the Home Secretary have to do with anything? Just who the bloody hell were these people?

"You've been sleeping with a spy," Rebecca told him bitterly, "and the two of them have been in love with each other for a decade. Oh, don't try to deny it, Harry. Everybody knows!"

At those words Paul sank onto the end of the bed, staring up at them, feeling as if the entire world had shifted beneath his feet. It was true, he realized, taking in the agonized expression on Ruth's face; those eyes, so brilliantly blue, eyes that had captured his interest from the moment he first saw her, betrayed her every thought.

"Oh, I don't think it's been a whole decade," Harry said drily, making a pathetic attempt at diffusing the tension, but Rebecca just rolled her eyes and Ruth raised an eyebrow at him as if to say _really?_

"I really didn't know he'd be here," Ruth said slowly, turning from Harry and back to Rebecca. "But then I heard you talking out on the balcony, and…"

"And you had to speak to him," Rebecca finished with a sigh. The way she said it, as if it were the most logical thing in the world, as if she had already given up the fight, chilled Paul to the core.

"How did you know-" Harry started to ask, though Rebecca interrupted him at once.

"People talk, Harry. A lot of the documents are sealed, but I saw enough. I wanted to get to know you better and since you weren't talking...anyway. I suppose you two have come to some sort of agreement, then?" she gestured vaguely towards them, a world of innuendo contained in the flippant wave of her hand. They did not answer, but then they did not really need to, for in their faces Paul could see the truth. Rebecca was right; whatever they had been when they first arrived in the city it was rather painfully obvious that Ruth and Harry were now acting as one unit.

"You don't have to answer that," she said, gathering up her handbag. "I suppose it's about time you got your act together. I am going to go downstairs, and I am going to have several more glasses of wine, and when I come back, I want you both to be gone."

"Will you be all right?" Harry asked. His tone was gentle, but he was not arguing with her; it seemed that gathering his belongings and leaving the hotel that very instant was quite in line with his own desires. It was a different sort of cruelty, to so blithely allow a woman who had until a few minutes prior been his lover to depart from his life without a moment's consideration, to so blatantly demonstrate his lack of feelings for her even while ostensibly asking after her well being. No one seemed to spare a moment for Paul, and he'd had quite enough of being ignored.

"How can you ask her that?" Paul demanded. "You brought her here, and you've...you've…" he couldn't quite finish the sentence, but then he supposed he didn't really need to; everyone in that room knew exactly what had done. What he and Ruth had done together.

"I'll be fine, Harry," Rebecca said, shooting a pitying glance at Paul. "I can make my own way home."

And just like that she left with her head held high, her dignity intact. The closing of the door behind her was a quiet, definitive sound of a book coming to an abrupt conclusion.

 _You've been sleeping with a spy,_ he heard her words once more, and he faced the two people across from him with a heart full of rage.

"You lied to me," he said as he turned once more to Ruth, his voice low but no less full of heat. "All this time, you've been lying to me. About your name, where you come from...have you been spying at the university?"

"As if there's anything in Bradford worth the effort," Harry muttered, but Ruth shot him a dangerous look and he quieted at once.

"No," she told Paul gently. "I've retired. I was just trying to start my life over. But it didn't really work."

"Because you're in love with him?"

And for once, she didn't hesitate.

"Yes," she said simply.

"You never really wanted anything to do with me, did you, Rachel? Or Ruth, or whatever your name is."

"Paul," she started to take a step towards him, her hands raised in a placating sort of gesture, but he wanted none of her tenderness, not now when his heart was aching and his ego was smarting.

"Don't," he spat, and she recoiled at once.

There was no way for him to preserve his pride, he saw. Rebecca had left of her own volition, but in so doing she had put him in an untenable position. Left alone in this room, with a woman he thought he adored, a woman who had just proved that everything he thought he knew about her was a lie, a woman who was by her own admission in love with another man, he would have no choice but to leave with his tail tucked between his legs. He had been right all along, it seemed, that she had secrets to hide. He could not fathom the depth of that deception; whatever course her life had charted, he would never learn the truth of it. She was, if possible, even more hopelessly intriguing now, and if she had not wounded him so deeply he might have pressed for answers about her work, might have been eager to learn of her adventures, her misdeeds, to learn the story behind her connection to Harry. As it was, however, he was too lost in himself to ponder those questions, and it seemed that neither Ruth nor Harry was willing to give them.

"To hell with you both," he muttered. "Rebecca has the right idea. I'm going to have a drink, and then I never want to see you again."

Perhaps the most telling thing was that Ruth did not try to stop him; she remained in her position, standing with her man on the other side of the room, watching Paul walk out of her life. If he were being honest with himself he would have admitted that he _wanted_ her to stop him, but she did not, and so he left her, slammed the door behind him and went to wait for the lifts.

 _To hell with them both,_ he thought grimly.


	15. Chapter 15

"That went well," Harry said drily as the door slammed behind Paul, but then he turned to Ruth and saw the sheen of tears in her eyes, and regretted his flippant remark at once.

"Oh Ruth," he sighed, reaching out to take her in his arms, but she pulled away, shaking her head, a mortified expression on her face.

"What have we done, Harry?"

There was a world of sorrow in her tone and it chilled him to the core. Though the last few minutes had hardly filled him with joy he had experienced a certain relief, knowing that he and Ruth were both free, now, to do as they pleased, to live the life he'd so longed for. That Ruth did not seem to share in that relief did not bode well for their future, a future he could almost feel slipping through his fingers.

"We did exactly what we set out to do," he told her as gently as he could. "It was wrong of me to start something with Rebecca in the first place, when I knew I would never care for her the way she wanted me to. It would have been worse to drag it out, to give her cause to hope. She's not the woman I want, Ruth, and it's better for her to be free to go and find someone else than to keep her trapped in a lie."

It was the truth, without question. Discovering Ruth again, seeing her, holding her, hearing her voice, had shown him just how foolish it was, that he should ever try to move on from her. She was the one for him, without question, for all of time. Should she turn from him now he knew he would never find another to love as he loved her. Nor would he want to, for to settle for anything less than Ruth, in his arms, in his life, in his bed, would be to settle for second best, and that had never been his way.

Ruth, though, he could not fathom her feelings on the matter. Before this moment he had been certain that Ruth had made her choice, had chosen _him,_ that she harbored no deep feelings for Paul. Seeing the man in person had only bolstered Harry's confidence, as Paul had been waspish and snide, traits Harry knew Ruth abhorred. Why then should she seem so lost, so sad now?

"Look at what we did to them, Harry," she said, reaching up to run her fingers through her hair. "Paul was devastated."

Perhaps it was only guilt then, that furrowed her brow and left her wringing her hands. Harry was rather accustomed to that response from her, and he tried to be understanding when he spoke.

"Of course I don't like the way things unraveled, either, but the end result is the same. I want you, Ruth. I want us, together. We knew that it might hurt them both, but in the end, this is what's best for everyone. They can live their lives, and we can, too."

He held out his hand, waited for a moment with bated breath to see what she might do. Everything he had ever wanted, everything he'd ever dreamed of, seemed to hang in the balance. It had all seemed so easy, in that hotel room across the city, holding a naked Ruth in his arms; they had spoken softly of a life beyond Five, a life without the grief and chaos that had forged them, a life of quiet hope. They had spoken of love, a love deep, and lasting, and true, and in that little room he had begun to believe, once more, in that love that seemed to mean more to him now than anything else in the world. They had left that room behind, however, and standing here in this place with Ruth he felt his confidence weaken, just a little, felt the sudden eddy of disappointment swirling round his feet. It might well break him, to come so close to having her only to lose her once more. He had lost her twice already; he wasn't certain he would survive a third.

And yet he need not have worried, for with a soft sound of distress Ruth reached out and took his hand, clinging to him fiercely.

"I want this, Harry," she whispered into the stillness that surrounded them. "I meant what I said. I don't want to spend another night apart from you."

There were no words he could say that would adequately capture the immensity of his joy, in that moment, and so he only drew her to him, wrapped his arms around her and crushed her to his chest while she in turn melted into him, the tension leaving her body all at once.

"Will Rebecca make things difficult for you, do you think?" Ruth asked, her voice muffled somewhat as she seemed intent on burrowing herself beneath his skin, her lips brushing the column of his throat as she spoke.

"No," he answered honestly. "She's more likely to pretend we've never met. And besides, I don't intend on being in London much longer."

Ruth drew in a ragged breath at that, but she did not protest, and for that Harry gave thanks. No, he didn't expect any trouble from Rebecca; she was a dignified sort of woman, and had always been happy to keep their connection quiet, preferred not to share the details of her private life with her colleagues. It would not be in her nature to share the mortification she had experienced in this room with another living soul.

"What about Paul?" he asked, wishing he didn't have to, wishing they could both simply pretend the man didn't exist, and yet desperately needing some reassurance that Ruth's last few weeks in Bradford would not be unbearable.

"No," Ruth said, shaking her head, and Harry smiled as he felt her soft hair brush against his chin. "No one would believe him if he told them what happened here, and I'm sure he knows that."

Harry shifted slightly, and Ruth lifted her chin so that at once they were looking one another in the eye. "No," he agreed with a smile, reaching out to cradle her cheek in his palm, to trace his thumb along the rise of her pale cheek. "They wouldn't believe it, would they?"

Harry wouldn't have believed it, had he not experienced it for himself. A quiet, some reclusive, bookish Bradford professor encountering a former lover in Paris, declaring that she was a spy living under a false name and that she intended to throw over her whole life in favor of running off into the sunset with a portly, balding man approaching his sixtieth birthday? No, such things did not happen in the steady, ordered world that Paul and his colleagues inhabited, and likely anyone hearing the story from his lips would declare him mad, or simply bitter. He seemed a man too proud to make such a foolish mistake.

"Besides," Ruth added softly, "I don't intend on being in Bradford much longer."

"Where would you go, Ruth?" he asked her, suddenly realizing that they had not answered that question. He had sworn to her that he would leave the service, and he meant to make good on that promise. They had discussed taking a month or two to settle their affairs, but they had reached no conclusion as to where they would go, what they would do, how they would go about creating a life for themselves.

"I will go where you go, Harry," she answered him with such conviction that he felt his heart leap in his chest. He could not stop himself, and so he bowed his head and brushed a kiss against her lips.

"I need to gather my things," he said. "Will you stay with me? And then we can go and get your things as well."

Ruth nodded, and so they began, together, to pack up the bits and pieces of Harry's life that had found their way into various corners of the room. Though it might have been more expedient to send Ruth off to her own room he was grateful that she had agreed to stay with him; her company was a balm to his weary soul, and though Paul had said he was going downstairs for a drink the man remained unpredictable, and Harry shuddered to think what might happen should he return to the room and find Ruth alone there.

Their task took hardly any time at all; Harry gathered his bag, left his room key on the bedside table for Rebecca to find later, and then took Ruth's hand, leading her out in the corridor. Gathering her things took decidedly longer, but he chose not to tease her for her delightful insistence on clutter; the moment was delicate, their nerves frayed, and he wanted, more than anything, to make her comfortable, to make her happy.

When at last her bag was packed she took her own room key and laid it on the entry table. She stood for a moment, staring at it, and so Harry stepped up and took hold of her hand once more.

"All right?" he asked her softly, hesitantly.

"I was just thinking," she said slowly. "About Paul. About why I ever agreed to see him in the first place. He's a nice enough man, I suppose, but he has a quick temper." Harry frowned, for he knew that same descriptor could be applied to himself, and Ruth had pronounced the words distastefully. "And he can be so childish, sometimes. He was always...he isn't the sort of man I'd like to spend my time with."

 _I should hope not,_ Harry thought grimly, but he wisely kept his mouth shut.

"And I realized, just now, who it is that he reminds me of. He's nothing like you, Harry. But he reminds me so much of...of George."

Harry's heart went cold at the sound of the name, but when Ruth lifted her head to face him, he saw a soft smile at the corner of her lips and a firm resolution in her eyes. "He was comfortable. I knew what he wanted from me, and I knew how to live that life. I don't quite know how to do this," she waved her free hand vaguely through the air between them, "but _this_ is what I want. You, and me. We can work it out together, can't we?"

"Of course we can," he said, lifting her hands to his lips. "We will work it out, Ruth. You, and me, together. As we always should have been."

"Then let's go, Harry," she told him. And without another word they stepped from the room, both of them smiling rather foolishly as they made their way out to the lifts.

Given the hour and the fact that they were both carrying bags Harry asked the desk clerk to ring for a taxi, and they opted to wait outside on the pavement rather than risk running into Paul or Rebecca in the lobby. They stood unspeaking, fingers still intertwined, as if neither of them intended to ever let go. Harry certainly didn't; they had done it, somehow, had broken free from the guilt and the lies and the trappings of the life that had for so long kept them apart, and now, on this beautiful night, they were starting afresh. It might not have been perfect, but then things between them so rarely were. It simply was, them, together, finding their way, and Harry could think of nothing better.


	16. Chapter 16

Harry was asleep, or at least he seemed to be; his breathing was steady, slow and deep and even, his eyes closed, the weary lines at the corners of his mouth relaxed, his whole face soft and warm and lovely. He looked like a man who did not have a care in the world, Ruth thought as she lay propped up on her elbow beside him, studying his face intently though she remained still as a stone, determined not to wake him. This was supposed to be a holiday for him, a chance to restore himself, and she knew he needed the rest; more than that, though, Ruth did not disturb him for she could not fathom what she might say should his eyes flutter open and soft questions drip from his lips.

 _What are you thinking,_ he would ask her in that tone just this side of trepidatious, demanding entry into her private world and yet at the same time seemingly utterly terrified of such vulnerability. Her thoughts were a maze through which Harry had only rarely emerged unscathed, and he knew that as well as did she. No, it would be better for them both if he slept, and kept his questions to himself, and gave Ruth the time she needed to work through the problem at hand.

An entire lifetime had passed in the course of a bare few hours, from their meeting, to their tumbling together, the cataclysm in the hotel, their return to this safe haven. Ruth felt dizzy, and revitalized, and terrified; _how,_ she kept asking herself. _How could this have happened?_ Harry, returned to her arms, as hungry for her now as he was the day he whispered his proposal into her unwilling ear; she had dreamt of him so often that it was difficult to believe he was really lying beside her, close enough that if she could only find the courage to reach out her hand she might press her palm against his chest and feel the beat of his heart beneath his skin. She had dreamt of him, but in her experience such dreams only ever turned to ashes in her hands.

What was to become of them, when the sun rose? That was the question that troubled her most, at present. It had all seemed so much simpler a few hours before, when they had been lying in this same bed, sweaty and sated and delirious with love of one another. Harry had whispered every word she had ever wished to hear from him, had told her how ardently he loved her, how nothing in the world mattered more to him than her, how the burden of Albany she had carried for two long years was no threat, to her or anyone else. He had talked of a simple life, books and flowers and long walks together, without danger or grief or pain. _Oh,_ the picture he had painted, the life he had offered her, _simple, and elegant,_ and _theirs,_ wholly, as it always should have been. That dream she wanted, more than words could say, but she could not fathom how they might go about getting it.

Harry would have to go back to London, of that there was no doubt. And Ruth, likewise, was resolved to return to Bradford. They would have to speak to their employers, and decide on a place to live, find a house and pack up their belongings and wade through the detritus of ordinary life that they had so often ignored while they lived their lives in the heart of the Grid. Boring things, ordinary things, the details of two rather sad, rather lonely, middle-aged people who had quite without warning chosen to completely detonate their own lives; they would have to wade through all of it, together. And then at the end of it they would simply be, standing together in the house that they had chosen, forced to face one another without the adrenaline, the fever which had so often consumed them in the past. Everything about their falling together had been heady and desperate; six years before she had been terrified, truly, of losing her position, derailing her career by choosing to bind herself to him. And then she had willingly walked away from her coveted position and her family and her home and her cats, all for his sake. Her fears had proven themselves well-founded, for in loving him she had lost herself. And then for two long years she had languished in a forgotten corner of the world until blood and pain reunited them once more, and they had fallen together in a haze of grief and tormented hearts, their every moment together colored by the shadow of death, the knowledge that they could at any time be torn asunder by the work they did. And then, of course they were, were utterly shattered by Harry's past, by Ruth's connection to him, and she had left him a second time.

And then tonight, oh tonight had been a fever, a delirium the likes of which she had never known, the sensation of a ticking clock hanging over their heads as they wrangled with one another, rushed straight into a solution neither of them had expected or planned for. Too fast, too fast, every moment carrying with it a new demand, a voice in the back of Ruth's mind shrieking _choose, choose now, or you shall lose the chance forever._ They had raced into one another's arms at a breakneck pace, and now all that remained to Ruth was a vast, yawning uncertainty.

Would he grow tired of her, come to resent her for the way she had stolen him from the world he had inhabited for the last thirty years and more, the diminishment of his own power, the loss of his prestige, his life grown small and boring for her sake? Would she chafe at sharing her life with this man, when it had been so many years since last she had lived so intimately with another? They had been apart for two long years, and she could not help but wonder if they would find one another so indelibly changed as to be utterly irreconcilable. All her earlier premonitions of ruin had come to pass and she remained truly, deeply scared that this happiness too was cursed for devastation.

And yet she had leapt from the precipice all the same, had closed her eyes and taken Harry's hand and flung herself out into the great unknown, trembling from head to foot and yet casting her challenge into the teeth of fate with an uncharacteristic sort of arrogance. She had chosen, at last, to seize the dream that had languished unfulfilled in her heart for six long years, this dream that she and Harry were more than star-crossed lovers, that they could grow old and fat and happy together. The yearning in her heart for him, for _them_ was so strong she very nearly began to weep as she looked at him; never, in all her life, had she wanted anything so badly as she wanted the future he had promised her, and never had she felt more certain that all her hopes were destined to turn to disappointment.

Harry wasn't scared, though. Harry had stripped himself down to his trunks and kissed her cheek and pulled her into his arms beneath the duvet, had whispered _it will be all right, Ruth, you'll see_ with the sort of conviction only he could muster. Harry was sleeping now, safe and sound in the knowledge that they had done the right thing, that they had every cause to hope. She wished, oh how she wished that she could share his optimism, share in the peace that colored his features as he slept.

How could it be, she wondered, that Harry could be so certain while she remained paralyzed by doubt?

 _Look at me now, and tell me you didn't love me._

It seemed as if an eon had passed since the moment when he stood before her on the pavement and whispered those words with heat and longing dripping from every syllable. He made it sound so easy, as if her love of him were the only thing that mattered, as if it admitting to it was the only obstacle that had kept them apart for so long. Ruth knew better; she had known she loved him since that night at Havensworth, when she had gone to him against all her better instincts and thrown her lot in with his, irrevocably. They had been bound since that night, down through the years, tied to one another with chains no man could break, not Harry, not George, not Paul; sometimes Ruth felt as if God himself could not sever that cord. He had asked her to marry him once, and suddenly it occurred to her that no matter the answer she had given him, no matter the nights they had spent apart, she had committed her heart to his long before he asked it of her. Every man she had been with since had been an infidelity for even when they were separated by miles, and years, and bitter words, she was his, and he was hers.

 _Til death do us part._

He would be hers, her Harry, no matter where she went, no matter what she did. If she left him now, if she let doubt steal her joy and returned to dreary Bradford and never heard from him again he would remain in her heart, inextricably, for all the rest of her days. Why then, she asked herself, should she not take this chance? She would love him, want him, need him, whether he was in her bed or a world away from her, and so then it seemed to her that if her heart was destined to break at least this way she could say that she had _tried_. She would give him her all, every piece of herself, would love him recklessly, wantonly, would be brave and reach her hands towards the very heavens for his sake. She would _try,_ and if the day did come when it all fell to pieces, even that seemed to her to be a better end than wasting away in Bradford, eaten alive by _what ifs_ and _might have beens._

He was hers, and she was his, from this day until her last day, and suddenly a great swell of love began to rise in her chest, cresting like some vast wave, washing over her until she was trembling from head to foot, breathless and overwhelmed. She _loved_ him, and he loved her, and they had done it, finally, had set a course for the horizon, _together_. One day, one day soon, she would wake in a bed far from this place to find him sleeping just like this, and she would slip down the stairs to start the kettle, and he would come padding after her in his robe, and they would sit down together in the quiet stillness of the morning with nowhere to go, nothing to do, but love each other, forever.

Quite suddenly she found that she did not want to let Harry sleep a moment longer.

As gently as she could she slid over him, settling herself down atop his hips, the blankets falling away as she straddled him and let her palms rest on the warm skin of his chest the way she had wanted to do for an hour now. The heat of him seeped through to her very bones, and a wild grin broke across her face unbidden. He was _hers_ , her Harry, and they were _free._

Slowly he began to wake; his hands moved first, reaching for her, finding purchase against the soft skin of her thighs, and then he sighed contentedly, and then the corners of his lips turned up in a satisfied grin, and then at last his eyes fluttered open, clear and warm and full of adoration as he looked at her.

"Ruth," he breathed her name, his voice hoarse but not displeased.

"I love you," she answered in a rush, the pads of her fingers tracing the lines of his chest.

Broad hands squeezed her thighs gently, and a soft hum echoed from the back of his throat.

"I had to tell you," she continued, leaning forward to press a reverent kiss to the corner of his mouth. "I had to tell you how much I love you, how much I want you, how-"

Still she leaned over him, lips brushing his skin as she spoke, but he cut her off, lifted one hand to tangle in her hair and held her to him as he kissed her, hard, tongue surging, lips pressing, a gasp escaping her at the passion of his response. He could be so eloquent, when he wanted to be, damn near poetic at times, could strike fear into the hearts of his enemies and inspire loyalty in his team and cow the very pillars of political power in London but in this moment he had no words for her. The reassurance he offered her was too fervent for words; in his kiss she could feel the very yearning of his soul, and she answered that longing with one of her own, lowered herself to lie atop him and caught her hands in his hair and gave herself over to the beauty of the moment. She knew that devastation might lie in wait for her, that months from now she might look back on this night and weep at her own folly, but she had come to realize, at long last, that protecting herself from such pain was not worth the grief of being separated from him. Let the heartbreak come for her if it would, she told herself; first she would have her joy.


	17. Chapter 17

St. Pancras Station bustled around them, the surge of the crowd and the chatter of busy people, but Ruth could not spare a moment for anyone or anything that was not Harry. They had woken that morning in Paris, wrapped around one another and safe in a haze of love and hopeful possibility, had enjoyed a quiet breakfast at a cafe before making the arrangements for their travel home. There was something dreadfully bittersweet about that thought now, the thought of _home,_ a place that Ruth had been searching for all her life, a place she had finally found, cradled in Harry's arms. Home for her was Harry, his strong arms, his gentle hands, his warm eyes, but though they were beginning this journey together, though at the end of it she could look forward to a lifetime spent in his embrace, the truth was that they would have to part ways, at least for a little while, would have to tend to their business alone and separated. There was nothing Ruth wanted less, and yet she knew she had no other choice.

They had taken the Eurostar to London. From there Ruth would continue by train to Bradford, and Harry would take a taxi back to his house. He would stay in London, this city Ruth loved, this city Ruth had given her life to protect, would walk the familiar streets and pavements, let his feet carry him back to Thames House, that imposing stone edifice within which Ruth had discovered her very self. Thames House had been home to her, for a time, was the place where she had learned the depth of her own strength, given a name to the longing of her heart, where she had made friends and lost them; Thames House was the forge that had melted her down and reshaped her from the flighty, over-eager girl she had once been into the shadow she was today. A part of her longed to return, to walk those halls once more, to trail her fingertips along the walls and the edge of the desk that had once been her domain, to raise her head and find Harry standing stark and strong against the deep red wall of his office, to catch his gaze and blush as she had done when she was young and foolish. A wiser, more rational part of her soul advised against it, however, reminded her that should she step once more through those doors she would not find the haven she remembered. The people she loved were gone, and Harry was grown old and weary, and the Grid was no place for them, now. She would have to let him travel there alone, would have to direct her feet along a different path, towards the life that she had chosen, for better or for worse.

She would have to let him go, but at the moment she could not bring herself to do such a thing. Her train would be leaving soon, and so she had risen from the bench where she and Harry had passed the time in quiet conversation, and he likewise had stood, and wrapped his arms around her. Standing here, with her nose pressed to the soft skin of his throat, his warmth, his scent, his very presence enveloping her, she was not certain that she possessed the strength to pull herself away from him. A small, pitiful piece of her heart whispered that perhaps she did not need to, that she could just as easily join Harry in his taxi, tender her resignation to the university via email and never return to that place. There were no possessions, no ties to her life in Bradford she could not break with ease; she could let everything she owned rot away untouched in that place forever, if only to spend her nights in Harry's bed, where she belonged. It was a dangerous longing that filled her, one she had resolved before this moment to ignore completely in favor of a more practical approach, but now that the reality of their imminent separation had begun to sink in she was finding it harder and harder to do the right thing.

"You ring me, when you get there," Harry murmured, and she could feel the rumbling of his voice in his chest where it pressed against her own.

"I will," she whispered, though her own heart was breaking. He had, in his own gentle way, reminded her that she must adhere to the plan they had made, must honor her commitment to her students, her promise to allow both she and Harry the time they needed to settle their affairs, even if she wanted nothing more than to go home with him, now and always.

"It won't take so very long," he said, trying his best to reassure her, and Ruth in turn did her best to keep her tears at bay. "Two months, and we'll be free. We can go anywhere we like, do anything we like. It will be all right, darling, you'll see."

A small sound of surprise escaped her at the word _darling,_ and she lifted her head to gaze into his eyes, finding only hope and a deep, abiding sort of love in his expression. She had been called _darling_ before, by her father, by friends, by former lovers, but Harry had never before used such an endearment with her, and the newness of it shocked her to her core. This was it, she realized; they were not shagging on the sly, trying not to watch one another too closely during the day, denying their connection to anyone who asked it of them. They were not broken, any more, trying to pretend as if they meant nothing to one another, as if they did not both harbor a deep and abiding love for one another. They were doing this, now, were standing strong and proud and declaring themselves a pair, two halves of the same whole, never to be torn asunder. He had claimed her, and she him, and they were standing on the verge of a new life, one they had made, together. She was his _darling,_ now, in a way she never could have been before, and he had become the very center of her universe, so dear to her that no word, no gentle diminutive could possibly have captured the depth of her regard for him.

"I still don't want to go," she confessed. In response Harry smiled, reached out to cradle her cheek in his palm.

"I love you," he told her earnestly, "and there is nothing I want less than to leave you. But we must do things in the proper order, now, so that when this is finished we have nothing left to worry about. We need a little time, but when that's through...I will never let you go, Ruth."

There was nothing for it then but to kiss him, and so Ruth lifted herself up onto her tiptoes and he bowed his head to meet her, and in the fervent press of his lips and the warmth of his hands she felt the echo of every promise he had ever made to her. This parting was agony, but she told herself as she kissed him that it would be worth it, in the end. That _they_ would be worth it, that the life they dreamed of would be more than enough to sustain her through this grief. She had to believe it, for if she did not she was certain she would have fallen to pieces right there in the station.

"It's time to go, Ruth," Harry breathed against her lips.

"I'll see you soon," she answered, stealing one last kiss. She would not say goodbye to him, not now. This parting would only be brief, and Ruth was resolved to never say goodbye to him again.

"Very soon," he answered, and then somehow she found the fortitude to step away. With one last, sad smile she turned away from him, her fingertips slipping through his like water through a sieve, and then she was walking away. She could not look back, for she was certain that if she did her strength would desert her, that if she saw him standing there, looking forlorn and lonely in the middle of the station she would never be able to leave him. She kept her back straight and her gaze straight ahead, and at last allowed the tears to fall.

* * *

 _Two days later..._

"I have to say, I'm surprised, Harry," Erin told him, watching him warily from the chair on the other side of his desk. "I didn't think you approved of me taking over your position."

He did his best not to roll his eyes or otherwise show his displeasure with her response. This was the first of many steps to be taken, to allow him to leave this place and join his life to Ruth's, and before this moment he had been certain that this would be the easiest one. Erin had been eyeing his chair lustfully from the moment the tribunal ended with Harry's reinstatement, and he had thought that she would be pleased to see the back of him. Courtesy dictated that he speak to her first, insure that she was prepared to take on the role before he presented her to Towers as his chosen successor.

"You and I have very different management styles," he said as diplomatically as he could, "but you are a fine agent and you have a talent for organization that will be needed when I'm gone. You've built a solid team and I believe you will do well here. I would have thought that you would jump at the chance to be the first female Head of this Section." And she would be, though not the youngest, for Harry himself held that title. At the time of his appointment he was the youngest serving Section Head in history, and he had since become the longest serving leader of Section D. The accolades gave him no pride, however, for he knew how much they had cost him.

"I want this position," she said with some conviction, "but until today I was fairly certain you would die before you gave me your chair. Something has changed, and I don't like being kept in the dark."

Her gaze was piercing, and her words had struck their mark. She was right of course, had seen through him at once; before the HS had ordered him to take a holiday Harry had been unwavering in his devotion to his position, had never even considered retirement. Something _had_ changed; the very foundations of the earth had rearranged themselves beneath his feet. Perhaps Erin thought there was something more at play, something political perhaps or something to do with an upcoming operation, but Harry knew better. The cause of his change of heart would remain his own secret, and no business of hers.

"The time has come for me to step aside," he said simply. "Do you want the position or not, Miss Watts?"

"I do," she answered, and that was that.

He dismissed her, and sat for a time in his office, staring out at the Grid, at his people, his paperwork, the bulwarks of his life strong and unshakeable. This had been his place for so very long that he hardly knew what he would be outside those walls, but he was itching to find out. Yes, he would miss the action, the adrenaline, the sense of purpose, but he had discovered something far more important to him, and he could not cast side his dreams for the future just to remain in this place that felt so familiar. He had tried to give up his career for Ruth once before, and lost her in the process, and in the losing of her he had discovered just how very much she meant to him. Oh, he could survive without her, knew how to live his life in the grey pallor of her absence, but he did not _want_ to. Not any more. He wanted Ruth, in his bed, in his life, by his side, always, and this was the price he had to pay to have her. He must trade one life for the other, and he would do so gladly.

Smiling then he reached for a fresh piece of paper, and began to compose his letter of resignation. The time had come, and he could linger no longer.

* * *

"You can't be serious," Lawrence said incredulously. He was holding Ruth's - Rachel's - letter of resignation in his hands, and he seemed completely stunned by the thought that she might wish to leave. This was her first day back at work following her dramatic weekend in Paris, and Ruth had wasted no time in coming to him. The whole point of her returning to Bradford was to allow her time to finish the term with her students, to allow the university time to find her a suitable replacement, and she bristled at the thought that Lawrence had no idea the kindness she had offered him, the sacrifice she had made in order to keep her commitments to him and to her students.

"I am," she said simply. Yes, she was serious about leaving, had spent Sunday alternately soaking in the bath and researching homes for sale all over the country. Two months seemed somehow to be an eternity of waiting and no time at all to make her preparations; it was hardly enough time to find a suitable place to live, but it was far too long to spend away from Harry.

"Look did something happen in Paris? With Paul? We can arrange it so you never have to see one another. Hell, I'd rather let him go than lose you, Rachel. You're our most popular lecturer. The students adore you. Please-"

"This has nothing to do with Paul," Ruth said sharply. The question chilled her to the core, but it also told her that word of the fiasco in Paris had not yet reached Lawrence's ears, for which she was very grateful. "It's time for me to leave. I'll see out the term."

"There's really nothing I can offer you? No way to change your mind?"

Ruth smiled at him softly. "No," she said.

No, there was nothing anyone could offer her, nothing that would appeal to her more than _Harry,_ than his smile, his gentle voice, the knowledge that they were both safe and well and happy, together. _Forever._


	18. Chapter 18

_One month later…_

"Do you have any big plans for the weekend?" Harry asked her, and Ruth smiled as she relaxed further into her bath, his voice echoing around the room through the tinny speakers of her mobile. It was such a _nice_ question, such a normal question, a piece of banality her heart had yearned for, for years now. It was a Friday evening, and she was lying in the bath with a glass of white wine and her mobile close to hand, talking to Harry about her plans for the weekend. A bare few months before such a thought would have been preposterous to her, and yet here she was, enjoying every moment. _O_ _h,_ she thought, _how things have changed._

His calls had been infrequent, and they never ceased to delight her. With his unpredictable schedule there was almost no point in her ringing him, and so she had resigned herself to waiting until he could spare a moment for her. Which he did, as often as he could; preparations for leaving London and turning over operations to Erin had kept him busy near every minute but still he found the time to reach out to her, to strengthen their connection, and Ruth never begrudged the interruption, no matter how late it came, for each call was a reminder of just how much Harry loved her, just how important she was to him, just how much value he placed on their relationship. A _real_ relationship now, a proper one, complete with murmured endearments and concrete plans for the future and conversations that didn't center on national security. It was strange, sharing these tiny intimacies with Harry, but it was lovely, too.

"Actually, yes," she answered, grinning though he could not see her. "I'm going to look at a house."

There was a moment's pause, and then through the mobile Ruth heard a shuffling sort of sound, and then the unmistakable slam of a car door. _He must be on his way home,_ Ruth thought, for Harry often called her from the car as he made the journey from Thames House back to his own home.

"Where?" Harry asked, and Ruth delighted in his tone of curiosity, his total lack of hesitation. He had entrusted this task to her, to find them a place to live; he was far too busy, and insisted that whatever choice she made would delight him. _I will follow you wherever you wish to go, darling,_ he had told her, and she had known then that his words were true, that all that mattered to him was that they might start over together; the how and the where of it did not factor into his concerns.

"Peacehaven," she answered. "There's a position available at the University of Sussex for next term, and it's only a twenty minute drive."

"Sussex," Harry said, a world of meaning contained in that single word.

 _Can you even picture it? Us in a little house in Sussex?_

It had seemed unthinkable, once. A piece of serenity they would never achieve. And yet now, astonishingly, everything had changed, and that dream of a simple, elegant life was somehow within their grasp.

"There's a house, close to the cliffs. I think you'll like it. I'll take pictures tomorrow so you can see."

"That would be lovely," he said, but before she could answer him there came the sound of someone pounding on Ruth's front door.

" _Shit,"_ she swore, scrambling from the bath, her heart racing. It was rather late, and she couldn't imagine who would possibly come knocking on her door at this hour; unless, she realized as a tide of horror began to rise within her, unless it was Paul, piss drunk and angry, come to have it out with her. She had so far been able to avoid him, but she wouldn't put it past him, really, to show up unannounced, cross and combative. A little piece of her heart expected it; a little piece of her heart suspected that she deserved it. And so she squared her shoulders, and she slipped into her robe as quickly as she could.

"I'm going to have to put you down for a moment, Harry," she said as she padded down the corridor from her bathroom to her front door.

"Everything all right?" he asked her gently.

"Someone's at the door. I'll just be a moment."

With trembling hands she slid her mobile into the pocket of her robe and reached to unlock the door, opening it slowly, dreading the very thought of who might have been standing on the other side.

And yet the sight that greeted her there was not Paul, with bloodshot eyes and pouting lips and a roar of invective; it was, miraculously, impossibly, _Harry,_ standing with his mobile pressed to his ear and a holdall clutched in his free hand. He wore a plain white shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows and a pair of dark blue jeans, and the widest, brightest smile Ruth had ever seen upon his face.

"I'm going to hang up now," he said, laughing, ending the call on his mobile before tucking it in his pocket.

"Harry?" Ruth breathed his name incredulously, her heart now pounding for an altogether different reason. This was the last thing she had expected; they had discussed his arrival, and while no concrete date had been set they had been both determined that another month's waiting would be required. And yet, here he stood, smiling.

"Hello, Ruth," he answered.

She could not help herself; with a low cry of delight she reached for him, wound her arms around his neck and clutched him to her fiercely. Harry just laughed and dropped his bag so that he could hold her, properly, as she buried her face in the crook of his neck and breathed in the comforting scent of his cologne, let her lips brush against his neck as she tried her hardest not to cry. Though the phone calls had helped there was no denying that Ruth had spent the last four weeks languishing in grief and doubt, missing him with everything she had, wondering if the next time her phone rang it would be Erin or the Home Secretary, calling to tell her that Harry had perished like so many of their friends. Men like him didn't often leave Thames House on their own two feet, she knew, and she had been desperately, terribly afraid that some terror would snatch him from her grip before they ever had a chance to set out in their new life together. Those worries had been for naught, it would seem, for he was here, warm and solid beneath her hands, holding her close, whispering gentle words of reassurance in her ear while she trembled in his embrace. He had come to her, for how long she could not say, but just having him here, just the touch of his hand, was enough to comfort her now. She could bear any burden, so long as she had the chance to hold him now.

"I have missed you so much," she confessed, her lips brushing his skin as she spoke.

"I have ached for you," he answered, and those words threw her back to that beautiful, terrible night in Paris, when he had wrapped his arms around her and sworn to love her, always, forsaking all others, when he had clutched her thighs in the cages of his broad hands and brought her to the very heights of bliss, when he had set fire to her very world, and in so doing allowed her this chance at a new beginning.

She did not hesitate, then; she raised herself up onto her tiptoes and tilted her chin and he met her in a moment, soft lips sliding together, warm and sweet, and her heart swelled full to bursting with love of him. It all unraveled quickly from there; he kicked his bag through the door and then promptly closed it, anchored her against him with his hands on her hips, kissed her with everything he had while she led him back, step by step, down the short corridor to her bedroom. They slid onto the bed together, rolling until they met, her thigh over his hip, his lips brushing against the swell of her breast where her robe parted. Her hands fell to the button of his jeans and his own delved beneath her robe, a groan of longing escaping him as he found her naked and soft from her bath.

They did not speak, but then they did not always need to; after so many years, so many losses, so many long nights together, they communicated in a language all their own. The trail of fingertips and the soft sound of laughter and the brush of their lips spoke louder than any words, and so they continued, rocking against one another until at last a hoarse moan left Ruth's lips, and Harry swallowed the sound of it with his own fervent tongue while they fell apart, together.

After, sated, exhausted, deliriously happy, they rested, wrapped up tight in one another's arms.

"Peacehaven," Harry said, and Ruth hummed, turning her head to press a gentle kiss against his chest, just above his beating heart, that heart she loved with all of her own.

"It's an apt name," he explained, revealing some of his thoughts to her, and Ruth just smiled, shifting so that she could rest her chin against his chest and look him in the eye.

"It's what we need, isn't it?" she asked him softly. "A little peace?"

"A haven," he answered, reaching out to brush a lock of hair back from her face. "A place where we will be safe and happy, you and I."

Before this moment Ruth had not even thought of the significance of the name, but she became quite suddenly convinced that this _must_ be the place where they settled down. It seemed...predestined, somehow, ordained by some higher power, that a house should come available in that place, that a job might be on offer for Ruth there, that Harry had arrived in time to come with her when she visited. _Peacehaven;_ a place they could rest, and heal, together. It was a beautiful thought.

"You will come with me tomorrow, won't you?" she asked him, studying the soft lines of his face, so clear at this short range. "How long can you stay?"

At this question Harry grinned, and Ruth's heart soared in her chest, for with one look at him she found that she knew what he was going to say before he said it.

"I mean to stay forever," he answered gently. "Today was my last day. I'm afraid I couldn't wait a moment more."

Ruth slid across his body and kissed him soundly, hoping that he could feel in her touch all the emotions she could not find words to express. That he had done such a thing for her, expedited his plans for departure and come to her at the first possible moment, was a beautiful thing, a gift she had hardly dared wish for. Before this moment she had been somewhat worried that she might have to go down to London and prise Harry out of his chair with her own two hands, so bound was he to the life he had lived there. And yet here he was, having made a clean break, ahead of schedule, for no reason other than that he loved her, and wanted, more than anything, to be with her. There was nothing he could have done to more clearly demonstrate his commitment, his devotion to her, and Ruth had recognized the gesture at once for what it was.

At long last they parted, and Ruth lowered herself to rest atop him once more, delighted and content.

"You're going to love the house," she told him softly.

"I love you," he answered. "The house doesn't matter. So long as you're in it, I'll be happy."

Tears gathered in the corners of Ruth's eyes, for she could not remember, truly, the last time he had been happy, the last time _she_ had been happy, and yet it seemed that joy had found them, at long last. They had finally broken free from their chains, and closed the door on all the grief and heartache that had so troubled them in the past. They were together, and tomorrow they would go, would set their feet upon the path towards _home,_ and there was nothing Ruth wanted more.


End file.
